Carrier route record
WNMCO→LAS
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 930
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to LAS sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 930 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 408 at 89.2% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MCO to LAS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 928 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.6%
Every carrier on MCO to LAS, 1,900 flights
These figures cover 930 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to LAS
Southwest flew 930 of the 1,900 flights on MCO to LAS, about 49% of it. Its 75.9% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 89.2% to Spirit at 66.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 89.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 81.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 461 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 (this page) | 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+ |
JetBlue leads Frontier by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 34 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am255 flights94.1%
- 8am–11am127 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm66 flights66.7%
- 2pm–5pm190 flights67.7%
- 5pm–8pm251 flights59.6%
- 8pm–5am41 flights65.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.6% on time, against 94.1% 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 255 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to LAS through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 88.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.6%. 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,611 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 12,000 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.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here 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 roughly 50 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 runs 73.3% on time across 940 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 930 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 LAS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 930 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 75.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 928 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to LAS, every carrier
- Southwest on LAS to MCO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to LAS89.2%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to LAS81.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) 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.