Carrier route record
WNMCO→MDW
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,548
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 92%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to MDW sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,548 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on MCO to MDW runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 76 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,473 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.5%
Every carrier on MCO to MDW, 2,780 flights
These figures cover 2,548 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
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to MDW
Southwest flew 2,548 of the 2,780 flights on MCO to MDW, most of the route. Its 70.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 75.5% to Southwest at 70.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 2,548 | 70.0% | 56 min | 2.08% | C |
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 43 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–8am402 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am430 flights80.8%
- 11am–2pm357 flights75.6%
- 2pm–5pm468 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm557 flights55.5%
- 8pm–5am334 flights49.7%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.7% 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 557 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to MDW through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 81.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 241 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.9%. 22 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 42,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%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 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 41,820 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 2.08% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.86%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here 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 last about an hour, 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 75.5% on time across 2,541 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,548 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 Southwest on MCO to MDW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 81.4% on time and March 62.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,473 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to MDW, every carrier
- Southwest on MDW to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to MDW75.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) 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.