Route reliability record
MCO→HOU
Orlando to Houston
- Flights
- 2,023
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 849 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,023 MCO to HOU flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCO to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.3%, against 77.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,004 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.0% on time across 2,023 flights
These figures cover 2,023 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to HOU
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 | 2,023 | 77.0% | 55 min | 0.84% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Houston
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 → IAHOrlando to Houston | United Airlines | 83.6% | 84.1% | 0.65% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 2406 13:20 |
| 2. MCO → IAHOrlando to Houston | Frontier Airlines | 81.9% | 82.2% | 0.37% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. MCO → HOUOrlando to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 76.4% | 77.0% | 0.84% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. MCO → IAHOrlando to Houston | Spirit Airlines | 72.4% | 74.3% | 2.57% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 34 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–8am354 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am395 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm264 flights79.7%
- 2pm–5pm281 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm383 flights65.0%
- 8pm–5am346 flights59.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.9% 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 395 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 67.1% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 85.5%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 191 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.0%. 12 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 48% of the 25,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 25,351 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 are rare at 0.84%, 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 actually costs
6.8% 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.
The 849 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 runs 77.0% on time across 2,035 flights, within half a point 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 2,023 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 HOU 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 85.5% on time and June 67.1%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,004 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to HOU questions
How often is MCO to HOU delayed?
Roughly 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 23.0% of the 2,023 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
77.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.9%, 34 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 HOU?
June is the weakest month at 67.1% on time, compared with 85.5% in September. Across the year that is 18 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
- HOU to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.0%
- 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 HOU and HOU 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.