Route reliability record
MCO→PVD
Orlando to Providence
- Flights
- 1,603
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,072 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four 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 1,603 MCO to PVD flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 901 at 75.3% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to PVD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.7%, against 73.0% 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 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,580 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.3% on time across 901 flights
These figures cover 1,603 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 PVD
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 901 | 75.3% | 58 min | 1.22% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 702 | 70.1% | 68 min | 1.71% | C |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 75.3%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Providence
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → PVDOrlando to Providence | Southwest Airlines | 74.4% | 75.3% | 1.22% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. MCO → BOSOrlando to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 74.3% | 76.0% | 2.23% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2436 07:00 |
| 3. MCO → PVDOrlando to Providence | JetBlue Airways | 68.9% | 70.1% | 1.71% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. MCO → BOSOrlando to Boston | Spirit Airlines | 66.6% | 69.3% | 3.85% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. MCO → BOSOrlando to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 65.2% | 67.3% | 3.13% | 5am–8am, Fri | B6 352 06:00 |
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 27 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am152 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am210 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm337 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm181 flights72.4%
- 5pm–8pm467 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am256 flights66.5%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.9% on time, against 92.1% 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 467 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
August is the worst month at 58.4% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 84.8%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.0%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 27,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 26,659 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 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% 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 1,072 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 76.1% on time across 1,605 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,603 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 PVD after this flight
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 84.8% on time and August 58.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,580 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to PVD questions
How often is MCO to PVD delayed?
About 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 27.0% of the 1,603 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to PVD?
Southwest Airlines leads at 75.3% on time across 901 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 70.1%, a gap of 5 points. 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 PVD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.9%, 27 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 August delays on MCO to PVD?
August is the weakest month at 58.4% on time, compared with 84.8% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- PVD to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to PVD75.3%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to PVD70.1%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- DCA to PVD, a related route72.8%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.3%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record70.1%
- 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 PVD and PVD 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.