Carrier route record
WNMCO→LAX
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 330
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- 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 LAX draws a D+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 330 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 834 at 87.1% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.1% on time across 834 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 329 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.4%
Every carrier on MCO to LAX, 3,489 flights
These figures cover 330 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to LAX
Southwest flew 330 of the 3,489 flights on MCO to LAX, about 9% of it. Its 64.1% on time is 16 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.1% to Southwest at 64.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 87.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 73.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 735 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 834 | 87.1% | 65 min | 0.12% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,383 | 83.8% | 78 min | 1.16% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 81.4% | 53 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 735 | 73.4% | 110 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 330 | 64.1% | 49 min | 0.30% | D+ |
The spread between United and American is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 24 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am94 flights73.4%
- 11am–2pm36 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm90 flights68.9%
- 5pm–8pm110 flights49.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.5% on time, against 73.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 110 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to LAX through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 38.7%. December is the strongest month at 83.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 45 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 48.9%. 32 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 5,764 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,764 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,276 of the 5,764 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.30%, 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 costs
7.6% 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 2,218 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 77.3% on time across 330 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 330 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 LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 330 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 64.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 329 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to LAX, every carrier
- Southwest on LAX to MCO, the return leg
- United Airlines on MCO to LAX87.1%
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to LAX83.8%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to LAX81.4%
- American Airlines on MCO to LAX73.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.