Carrier route record
AAMCO→CLT
American Airlines · Orlando to Charlotte
- Flights
- 3,679
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 78%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MCO to CLT lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 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 3,679 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 590 at 80.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on MCO to CLT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,617 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.4%
Every carrier on MCO to CLT, 4,739 flights
These figures cover 3,679 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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
American against every carrier on MCO to CLT
American flew 3,679 of the 4,739 flights on MCO to CLT, most of the route. Its 78.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.6% to Spirit at 72.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 80.6% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 72.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 470 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 590 | 80.6% | 66 min | 1.19% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,679 | 78.8% | 88 min | 1.60% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 470 | 72.3% | 72 min | 4.47% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.5% 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.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on MCO to CLT
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 37 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am737 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am805 flights86.6%
- 11am–2pm690 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm815 flights70.5%
- 5pm–8pm530 flights56.1%
- 8pm–5am102 flights76.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 93.3% 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. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 815 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MCO to CLT through the year
August is the worst month at 67.3% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 86.8%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 337 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.0%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 68,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 67,540 reported delay minutes.
50% 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 68,000 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 1.60% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 70.4% on time across 3,676 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 3,679 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 American on MCO to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.8% on time and August 67.3%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,617 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to CLT80.6%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to CLT72.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.