Route reliability record
MCO→CLT
Orlando to Charlotte
- Flights
- 4,760
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 468 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.4%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 4,760 flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 566 at 79.9% on time.
Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.9% on time across 566 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,660 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.97%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Frontier
79.9% on time across 566 flights
These figures cover 4,760 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to CLT
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 79.9% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 71.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 508 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 566 | 79.9% | 65 min | 1.24% | B |
| American Airlines | 3,686 | 78.5% | 89 min | 1.79% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 508 | 71.0% | 75 min | 4.13% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 36 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am980 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am972 flights84.9%
- 11am–2pm864 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm1,070 flights71.2%
- 5pm–8pm709 flights56.6%
- 8pm–5am165 flights68.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.6% on time, against 92.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 68.6% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 87.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.1%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 87,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure.
45% 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 87,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations sit at 1.97% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 468 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.5% on time across 4,758 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,760 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.2% on time and August 68.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else.
Common questions
MCO to CLT questions
How often is MCO to CLT delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.1% of the 4,760 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to CLT?
Frontier Airlines leads at 79.9% on time across 566 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 71.0%, a gap of 9 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.6%, 36 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on MCO to CLT?
August is the weakest month at 68.6% on time, compared with 87.2% in September. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on-time record79.9%
- American Airlines on-time record78.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record71.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MCO to CLT and CLT to MCO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.