Carrier route record
WNMCO→DCA
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Washington
- Flights
- 1,097
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to DCA draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,097 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 713 at 73.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.9% on time across 713 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,084 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.8%
Every carrier on MCO to DCA, 4,586 flights
These figures cover 1,097 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 DCA
Southwest flew 1,097 of the 4,586 flights on MCO to DCA, about 24% of it. Its 67.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 93.8% to JetBlue at 64.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 73.9% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 942 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 16 | 93.8% | 118 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 713 | 73.9% | 88 min | 3.79% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,818 | 69.6% | 90 min | 2.20% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,097 | 67.7% | 61 min | 1.19% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 942 | 64.5% | 71 min | 1.38% | D |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.8% 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.
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 32 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm306 flights68.1%
- 2pm–5pm62 flights53.2%
- 5pm–8pm77 flights51.9%
- 8pm–5am287 flights53.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.9% on time, against 84.3% for the 8am–11am 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 56.7% on time, 24 points below January, 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. July was the busiest month here, with 97 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.2%. 14 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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 21,000 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. The split is drawn from 21,267 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 759 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 73.1% on time across 1,097 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 1,097 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 Southwest on MCO to DCA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 81.1% on time and July 56.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,084 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to DCA, every carrier
- Southwest on DCA to MCO, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to DCA73.9%
- American Airlines on MCO to DCA69.6%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to DCA64.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.