Carrier route record

WNMCO→CLE

Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Cleveland

Flights: 325
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on MCO to CLE lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 325 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 543 at 85.2% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MCO to CLE from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 322 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.92%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

76.9%

Every carrier on MCO to CLE, 2,123 flights

These figures cover 325 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on MCO to CLE

Southwest flew 325 of the 2,123 flights on MCO to CLE, about 15% of it. Its 78.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.2% to Frontier at 72.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 85.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 72.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,255 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	543	85.2%	84 min	0.55%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	325	78.6%	46 min	0.92%	B+
Frontier Airlines	1,255	72.9%	82 min	1.35%	C

The spread between United and Frontier is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am5 flights—
8am–11am89 flights85.4%
11am–2pm31 flights74.2%
2pm–5pm154 flights77.6%
5pm–8pm38 flights71.1%
8pm–5am8 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.4% of the time, against 71.1% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 154 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on MCO to CLE through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, December worst

December is the weak month at 68.6% on time, against 87.9% in June. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 37 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.0%, a spread of 23 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on MCO to CLE runs when it is late

The 69 late arrivals split 33 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

15+ min early49 flights15.2%
Within 15 min204 flights63.4%
15–29 min late33 flights10.2%
30–59 min late21 flights6.5%
1–2 hours late13 flights4.0%
2+ hours late2 flights0.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 322 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 81 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 30 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 18 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at CLE.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on MCO to CLE

The latest arrival of the period was on 15 March 2026, 4 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on MCO to CLE in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
15 March 2026	4 hours 16 minutes	Extreme weather
27 December 2025	3 hours 14 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 November 2025	1 hour 59 minutes	Carrier
26 December 2025	1 hour 47 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
13 June 2026	1 hour 45 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 3,196 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
2%

44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,196 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 3,196 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 895 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.5% on time across 325 flights, 3 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 325 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on MCO to CLE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 325 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 322 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures