Carrier route record
UAMCO→CLE
United Airlines · Orlando to Cleveland
- Flights
- 561
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MCO to CLE earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 561 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MCO to CLE record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 556 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.9%
Every carrier on MCO to CLE, 2,066 flights
These figures cover 561 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on MCO to CLE
United flew 561 of the 2,066 flights on MCO to CLE, about 27% of it. Its 86.5% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.5% to Spirit at 50.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 561 | 86.5% | 70 min | 0.53% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 310 | 76.5% | 50 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,189 | 74.3% | 78 min | 1.09% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 50.0% | 90 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Departure window
When United 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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am19 flights—
- 11am–2pm308 flights92.1%
- 2pm–5pm78 flights84.6%
- 5pm–8pm156 flights77.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 92.1% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 77.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 308 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on MCO to CLE through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 76.7%. February is the strongest month at 94.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 17 points. March was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.2%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 5,274 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 5,274 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 5,274 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 89.4% on time across 562 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 561 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 United on MCO to CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 561 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 86.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 556 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to CLE, every carrier
- United on CLE to MCO, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to CLE76.5%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to CLE74.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.