Carrier route record

WNMCO→RIC

Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Richmond

Flights: 320
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 27%
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 RIC draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 320 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on MCO to RIC runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 173 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 317 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.94%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.7%

Every carrier on MCO to RIC, 1,202 flights

These figures cover 320 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 RIC

Southwest flew 320 of the 1,202 flights on MCO to RIC, about 27% of it. Its 60.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Southwest at 60.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to RIC
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	320	60.3%	60 min	0.94%	D+

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 30 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–8am—
8am–11am22 flights—
11am–2pm32 flights74.2%
2pm–5pm76 flights56.6%
5pm–8pm135 flights59.7%
8pm–5am55 flights44.4%

Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.4% on time, against 74.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 135 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on MCO to RIC through the year

Jul–Sep 202575 flights65.3%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights65.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights59.1%
Apr–Jun 202665 flights49.2%

Scale runs 40% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 60.3% on time across 320 flights.

Southwest on MCO to RIC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 65.3% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 49.2%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 80 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 48.0%. 39 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 52% of the 7,606 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

52% 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 7,606 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 7,606 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 12.0% 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 76.5% on time across 320 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 320 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 RIC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 320 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 60.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 317 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures