Carrier route record
WNMCO→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Denver
- Flights
- 1,973
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,973 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,758 at 85.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on MCO to DEN runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,961 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on MCO to DEN, 4,579 flights
These figures cover 1,973 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to DEN
Southwest flew 1,973 of the 4,579 flights on MCO to DEN, about 43% of it. Its 71.9% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.0% to Southwest at 71.9%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,758 | 85.0% | 87 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 848 | 83.0% | 62 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,973 | 71.9% | 56 min | 0.41% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 85.0%, 2 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 43 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am349 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am403 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm249 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm359 flights60.2%
- 5pm–8pm489 flights57.9%
- 8pm–5am124 flights52.9%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.9% on time, against 95.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 489 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 62.4% on time, 18 points below November, the best at 80.7%. 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 207 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.9%. 11 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 31,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
37% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 30,964 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 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% 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.
At 1,547 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 73.7% on time across 1,971 flights, within 2 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 1,973 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 DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 80.7% on time and July 62.4%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,961 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to MCO, the return leg
- United Airlines on MCO to DEN85.0%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to DEN83.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.