Route reliability record
MCO→PHX
Orlando to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,844
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,849 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,844 MCO to PHX flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 841 at 78.9% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.1%, against 78.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,827 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.9% on time across 841 flights
These figures cover 1,844 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to PHX
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 82.9% | 44 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 841 | 78.9% | 54 min | 0.36% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 796 | 78.0% | 103 min | 0.63% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 78.9%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCO to PHX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → PHXOrlando to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 78.6% | 78.9% | 0.36% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. MCO → PHXOrlando to Phoenix | American Airlines | 77.5% | 78.0% | 0.63% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 2015 07:30 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 25 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am608 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am177 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm309 flights82.4%
- 2pm–5pm99 flights72.2%
- 5pm–8pm492 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am159 flights72.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.4% on time, against 89.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 608 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO to PHX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MCO to PHX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.4%, a wide gap of 25.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.6%
- 8–11am86.4%
- 11am–2pm82.4%
- 2–5pm72.2%
- 5–8pm64.4%
- 8pm–5am72.3%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,844 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 74.3% on time, 12 points below November, the best at 85.8%. 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 193 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.3%, a spread of 14 points.
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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,892 reported delay minutes.
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,849 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 74.2% on time across 1,857 flights, 5 points below 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 1,844 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 64.4% on time against 89.6% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 25 points is the largest single thing you control here. Southwest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,827 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to PHX questions
How often is MCO to PHX delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.1% of the 1,844 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to PHX?
Southwest Airlines leads at 78.9% on time across 841 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 78.0%, a gap of about a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.4%, 25 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 July delays on MCO to PHX?
July is the weakest month at 74.3% on time, compared with 85.8% in November. Across the year that is 12 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
- PHX to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to PHX82.9%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to PHX78.9%
- American Airlines on MCO to PHX78.0%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.9%
- American Airlines on-time record78.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MCO to PHX and PHX to MCO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.