Route reliability record
MCO→LAS
Orlando to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 1,900
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,039 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,900 MCO to LAS flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 408 at 89.2% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to LAS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.2%, against 79.6% for the route overall.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.2% on time across 408 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,894 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
89.2% on time across 408 flights
These figures cover 1,900 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 LAS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 89.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 930 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 408 | 89.2% | 64 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 461 | 81.4% | 56 min | 0.43% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 930 | 75.9% | 52 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 19 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 98 | 66.3% | 57 min | 0.00% | C+ |
The spread between JetBlue and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCO to LAS
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Las Vegas
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → LASOrlando to Las Vegas | JetBlue Airways | 89.2% | 89.2% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. MCO → LASOrlando to Las Vegas | Frontier Airlines | 81.0% | 81.4% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Tue | F9 1875 07:54 |
| 3. MCO → LASOrlando to Las Vegas | Southwest Airlines | 75.9% | 75.9% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, 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 29 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am454 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am453 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm95 flights72.6%
- 2pm–5pm194 flights68.4%
- 5pm–8pm395 flights62.8%
- 8pm–5am309 flights75.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.8% on time, against 92.1% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 454 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
August is the worst month at 62.8% on time, 29 points below November, the best at 91.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 209 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.8%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
35% 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 3 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 21,069 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 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.11%, 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
6.2% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,039 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.5% on time across 1,906 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,900 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 LAS 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. November runs 91.5% on time and August 62.8%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,894 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to LAS questions
How often is MCO to LAS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.4% of the 1,900 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to LAS?
JetBlue Airways leads at 89.2% on time across 408 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.9%, a gap of 13 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 LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.8%, 29 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 August delays on MCO to LAS?
August is the weakest month at 62.8% on time, compared with 91.5% in November. Across the year that is 29 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
- LAS to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to LAS89.2%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to LAS81.4%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to LAS75.9%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- LAX to LAS, a related route76.5%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record89.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. MCO to LAS and LAS 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.