Carrier route record
WNMCO→CVG
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 235
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to CVG 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 235 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 820 at 76.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on MCO to CVG runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 231 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.28%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on MCO to CVG, 1,790 flights
These figures cover 235 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to CVG
Southwest flew 235 of the 1,790 flights on MCO to CVG, about 13% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 76.4% to Republic at 61.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 820 | 76.4% | 79 min | 1.59% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 721 | 73.6% | 89 min | 1.66% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 235 | 72.7% | 61 min | 1.28% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 61.5% | 45 min | 7.14% | D− |
No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 76.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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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 34 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am5 flights—
- 8am–11am54 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm66 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm93 flights54.8%
- 5pm–8pm17 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.9% of the time, against 54.8% for the afternoon window. That is 34 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 93 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to CVG through the year
- Oct–Dec 202562 flights85.2%
- Jan–Mar 202658 flights73.2%
- Apr–Jun 202677 flights63.2%
- Jul–Sep 202638 flights71.1%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.7% on time across 235 flights.
Southwest on MCO to CVG did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 85.2% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 63.2%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 59 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.7%, a spread of 28 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MCO to CVG runs when it is late
The 63 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 20 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early32 flights13.9%
- Within 15 min136 flights58.9%
- 15–29 min late27 flights11.7%
- 30–59 min late16 flights6.9%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late6 flights2.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 231 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 70 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. In the other direction, 13 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 CVG.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MCO to CVG
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 March 2026, 7 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in June 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 March 2026 | 7 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 16 March 2026 | 5 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 June 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 June 2026 | 2 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 June 2026 | 2 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
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 3,824 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,824 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 3,824 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,286 minutes out of 3,824, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.43%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 757 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 77.1% on time across 235 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 235 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 CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 235 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 72.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 231 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to CVG, every carrier
- Southwest on CVG to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to CVG76.4%
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to CVG73.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.