Route reliability record
MCO→CMH
Orlando to Columbus
- Flights
- 2,122
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 802 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,122 MCO to CMH flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCO to CMH: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.5%, against 72.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,089 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.46%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.1% on time across 1,512 flights
These figures cover 2,122 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to CMH
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 280 | 74.7% | 71 min | 1.07% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,512 | 74.1% | 58 min | 1.19% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 302 | 61.0% | 63 min | 3.31% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 28 | 53.6% | 68 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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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 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am287 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am441 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm186 flights73.8%
- 2pm–5pm406 flights72.2%
- 5pm–8pm501 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am301 flights49.8%
Scale runs 40% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.8% on time, against 92.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 501 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO to CMH by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MCO to CMH, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 49.8%, a wide gap of 42.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.3%
- 8–11am82.8%
- 11am–2pm73.8%
- 2–5pm72.2%
- 5–8pm63.3%
- 8pm–5am49.8%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 63.8% on time, 17 points below November, the best at 81.1%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 237 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.5%, a spread of 20 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 35,367 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.46% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 802 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 77.5% on time across 2,121 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,122 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CMH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 81.1% on time and August 63.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,089 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to CMH questions
How often is MCO to CMH delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 2,122 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to CMH compared with the rest of the country?
72.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to CMH?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 49.8%, 43 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 CMH?
August is the weakest month at 63.8% on time, compared with 81.1% in November. Across the year that is 17 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
- CMH to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to CMH74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to CMH74.1%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to CMH61.0%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.5%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record61.0%
- 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 CMH and CMH to MCO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.