Carrier route record
WNMCO→FLL
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 626
- 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 FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 626 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on MCO to FLL runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 620 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.2%
Every carrier on MCO to FLL, 1,448 flights
These figures cover 626 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 FLL
Southwest flew 626 of the 1,448 flights on MCO to FLL, about 43% of it. Its 69.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 81.9% to Southwest at 69.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 84 | 81.9% | 55 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 738 | 71.6% | 61 min | 1.63% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 626 | 69.2% | 56 min | 0.96% | C+ |
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am261 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm13 flights—
- 8pm–5am343 flights57.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.4% on time, against 83.9% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 343 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to FLL through the year
December is the weak month at 50.8% on time, against 88.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 49.4%. 30 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 11,000 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.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
65% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 10,627 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 83.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.96% 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. 9.0% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.7% on time across 627 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 626 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 FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 626 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 69.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 620 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to FLL, every carrier
- Southwest on FLL to MCO, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to FLL71.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.