Route reliability record
MCO→DAL
Orlando to Dallas
- Flights
- 2,643
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 973 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,643 MCO to DAL flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCO to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.8%, against 73.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,578 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.2% on time across 2,643 flights
These figures cover 2,643 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 DAL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,643 | 73.2% | 59 min | 1.78% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Dallas
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → DFWOrlando to Dallas-Fort Worth | Frontier Airlines | 76.8% | 78.0% | 1.59% | 5am–8am, Wed | F9 4017 05:40 |
| 2. MCO → DFWOrlando to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 72.3% | 74.2% | 2.61% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 2075 09:30 |
| 3. MCO → DALOrlando to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 71.9% | 73.2% | 1.78% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. MCO → DFWOrlando to Dallas-Fort Worth | Spirit Airlines | 68.0% | 70.8% | 3.97% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am469 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am569 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm302 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm459 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm541 flights59.9%
- 8pm–5am303 flights58.3%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 93.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 569 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO to DAL 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 DAL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 58.3%, a wide gap of 35.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.7%
- 8–11am79.4%
- 11am–2pm77.3%
- 2–5pm67.1%
- 5–8pm59.9%
- 8pm–5am58.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
June is the worst month at 60.7% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 84.9%. 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 246 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.9%, a spread of 18 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 41,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 40,706 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.78% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.68%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% 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 973 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 runs 70.4% on time across 2,653 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,643 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 DAL 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. September runs 84.9% on time and June 60.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,578 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to DAL questions
How often is MCO to DAL delayed?
About 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 26.8% of the 2,643 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to DAL compared with the rest of the country?
73.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 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 DAL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.3%, 35 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 June delays on MCO to DAL?
June is the weakest month at 60.7% on time, compared with 84.9% in September. Across the year that is 24 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
- DAL to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.2%
- 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 DAL and DAL 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.