Route reliability record
MCO→RIC
Orlando to Richmond
- Flights
- 1,202
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 667 mi
- Carriers
- 4
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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,202 MCO to RIC flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly MCO to RIC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.6%, against 68.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 89 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,175 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
74.7% on time across 676 flights
These figures cover 1,202 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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 RIC
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 | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 676 | 74.7% | 69 min | 1.78% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 202 | 61.3% | 71 min | 4.46% | D− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 320 | 60.3% | 60 min | 0.94% | 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 40 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–8am122 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am192 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm189 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm273 flights63.2%
- 5pm–8pm321 flights56.4%
- 8pm–5am105 flights54.8%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.8% on time, against 95.0% 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 321 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
February is the weak month at 59.1% on time, against 81.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.0%. 21 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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 24,478 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 95.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
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. 11.1% 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 667 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 71.8% on time across 1,202 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 1,202 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 RIC 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 81.7% on time and February 59.1%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to RIC questions
How often is MCO to RIC delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.3% of the 1,202 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to RIC compared with the rest of the country?
68.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 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 RIC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.8%, 40 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 February delays on MCO to RIC?
February is the weakest month at 59.1% on time, compared with 81.7% in September. Across the year that is 23 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
- RIC to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to RIC74.7%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to RIC61.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to RIC60.3%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- ATL to RIC, a related route81.2%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record74.7%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record61.3%
- 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 RIC and RIC to MCO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MCO to RIC’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.