Route reliability record
MCO→ORF
Orlando to Norfolk
- Flights
- 808
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 655 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 808 MCO to ORF flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly MCO to ORF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.6%, against 72.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 783 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.6% on time across 382 flights
These figures cover 808 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 ORF
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 | 182 | 82.1% | 78 min | 1.65% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 382 | 75.6% | 47 min | 1.31% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 244 | 60.4% | 63 min | 6.97% | D− |
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 51 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–8am42 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am196 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm137 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm165 flights72.2%
- 5pm–8pm133 flights66.2%
- 8pm–5am135 flights42.4%
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.4% on time, against 92.9% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 196 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 43 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 93.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 79 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.8%. 18 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% 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 13,000 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 12,510 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 92.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.09%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.2% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 655 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 76.6% on time across 808 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 808 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.09% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 783 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to ORF questions
How often is MCO to ORF delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.3% of the 808 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to ORF compared with the rest of the country?
72.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 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 ORF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 42.4%, 51 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 March delays on MCO to ORF?
March is the weakest month at 50.7% on time, compared with 93.5% in September. Across the year that is 43 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
- ORF to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to ORF82.1%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to ORF75.6%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to ORF60.4%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- ATL to ORF, a related route79.0%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record60.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MCO to ORF and ORF to MCO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MCO to ORF’s on-time badge on your site
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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.