Carrier route record
WNMCO→PHL
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 643
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to PHL sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 643 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,582 at 75.3% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.3% on time across 2,582 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 637 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on MCO to PHL, 5,332 flights
These figures cover 643 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 PHL
Southwest flew 643 of the 5,332 flights on MCO to PHL, about 12% of it. Its 68.1% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.3% to Spirit at 65.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.3% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 65.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 579 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,582 | 75.3% | 93 min | 2.17% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,528 | 71.4% | 91 min | 1.90% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 643 | 68.1% | 58 min | 0.78% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 579 | 65.0% | 71 min | 5.35% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after 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 36 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am9 flights—
- 8am–11am197 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm80 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm113 flights48.2%
- 5pm–8pm125 flights66.4%
- 8pm–5am119 flights56.1%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.8% of the time, against 48.2% for the afternoon window. That is 36 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 197 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to PHL through the year
July is the worst month at 45.2% on time, 45 points below September, the best at 90.5%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 68 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 12 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 11,710 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 862 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 72.3% on time across 641 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. 643 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 PHL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 643 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 68.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 637 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to PHL, every carrier
- Southwest on PHL to MCO, the return leg
- American Airlines on MCO to PHL75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to PHL71.4%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to PHL65.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.