Route reliability record
MCO→FLL
Orlando to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,448
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 177 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 1,448 MCO to FLL flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 738 at 71.6% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.0%, against 71.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 64 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,429 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Spirit
71.6% on time across 738 flights
These figures cover 1,448 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to FLL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 84 | 81.9% | 55 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 738 | 71.6% | 61 min | 1.63% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 626 | 69.2% | 56 min | 0.96% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Spirit tops the table at 71.6%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Fort Lauderdale
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. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → MIAOrlando to Miami | American Airlines | 73.9% | 74.8% | 1.14% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 2894 06:00 |
| 2. MCO → FLLOrlando to Fort Lauderdale | Spirit Airlines | 70.4% | 71.6% | 1.63% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. MCO → FLLOrlando to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 68.5% | 69.2% | 0.96% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. MCO → MIAOrlando to Miami | Southwest Airlines | 67.7% | 68.3% | 0.86% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
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 36 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am267 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am359 flights79.6%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm72 flights65.3%
- 5pm–8pm276 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am466 flights57.6%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 93.9% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 466 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 156 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.3%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 23,941 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 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.2% 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.
At 177 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.6% on time across 1,446 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,448 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 FLL 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 91.0% on time and March 52.4%, a swing of 39 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,429 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to FLL questions
How often is MCO to FLL delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.8% of the 1,448 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to FLL?
Spirit Airlines leads at 71.6% on time across 738 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 69.2%, a gap of 2 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.6%, 36 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 March delays on MCO to FLL?
March is the weakest month at 52.4% on time, compared with 91.0% in September. Across the year that is 39 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
- FLL to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to FLL71.6%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to FLL69.2%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record81.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record71.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MCO to FLL and FLL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.