Carrier route record

WNMCO→CVG

Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Cincinnati

Flights: 226
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 226 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 819 at 75.7% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on MCO to CVG runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 51 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 222 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.33%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.9%

Every carrier on MCO to CVG, 1,781 flights

These figures cover 226 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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

Southwest against every carrier on MCO to CVG

Southwest flew 226 of the 1,781 flights on MCO to CVG, about 13% of it. Its 72.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 75.7% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to CVG
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines	819	75.7%	77 min	1.47%	B
Delta Air Lines	722	72.5%	86 min	1.25%	C
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	226	72.5%	61 min	1.33%	C
Republic Airwaysthin sample	14	61.5%	45 min	7.14%	D−

No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 75.7%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 38 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am5 flights—
8am–11am39 flights92.3%
11am–2pm80 flights80.5%
2pm–5pm85 flights54.1%
5pm–8pm17 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.3% of the time, against 54.1% for the afternoon window. That is 38 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 85 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on MCO to CVG through the year

Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
Oct–Dec 202562 flights85.2%
Jan–Mar 202658 flights73.2%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights63.2%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.5% on time across 226 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 75 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 81.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.1%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 3,697 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
34%
Carrier
26%

40% 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 3,697 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 3,697 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 1,257 minutes out of 3,697, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.44%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.1% 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 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.0% on time across 226 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 226 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. 226 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 72.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 222 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures