Route reliability record
MCO→MDW
Orlando to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,780
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 990 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,780 flights, with a median arrival 1 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 71 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,702 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
70.0% on time across 2,548 flights
These figures cover 2,780 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to MDW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 75.5% | 81 min | 1.29% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,548 | 70.0% | 56 min | 2.08% | C |
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 41 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–8am441 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am451 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm409 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm506 flights67.4%
- 5pm–8pm602 flights56.9%
- 8pm–5am371 flights51.3%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.3% on time, against 92.2% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 602 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 63.8% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 82.3%. 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 286 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.7%. 20 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 46,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
40% 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 46,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 46,343 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 92.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.79%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.8% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 990 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.9% on time across 2,774 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,780 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.
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 82.3% on time and June 63.8%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,702 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to MDW questions
How often is MCO to MDW delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.5% of the 2,780 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
70.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to MDW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.3%, 41 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 MDW?
June is the weakest month at 63.8% on time, compared with 82.3% in September. Across the year that is 19 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
- MDW to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.0%
- 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 MDW and MDW to MCO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.