Route reliability record
MCO→SFO
Orlando to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,454
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,446 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,454 MCO to SFO flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCO to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.4%, against 77.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,444 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
80.7% on time across 1,065 flights
These figures cover 1,454 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 SFO
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 | 49 | 80.9% | 76 min | 4.08% | B− |
| United Airlines | 1,065 | 80.7% | 75 min | 0.38% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 340 | 67.7% | 64 min | 0.88% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on MCO to SFO
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.
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 26 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–8am250 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am426 flights86.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm24 flights—
- 5pm–8pm518 flights66.6%
- 8pm–5am236 flights70.8%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.3% of the time, against 66.6% for the evening window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 518 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.
July is the worst month at 65.3% on time, 23 points below March, the best at 88.3%. 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 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.3%. 9 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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 23,021 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 8,032 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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 actually costs
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 2,446 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 85.1% on time across 1,452 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,454 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 SFO 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. March runs 88.3% on time and July 65.3%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,444 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to SFO questions
How often is MCO to SFO delayed?
Roughly 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 22.4% of the 1,454 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to SFO compared with the rest of the country?
77.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.6%, 26 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 SFO?
July is the weakest month at 65.3% on time, compared with 88.3% in March. 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
- SFO to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on MCO to SFO80.7%
- Alaska Airlines on MCO to SFO67.7%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record80.9%
- United Airlines on-time record80.7%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record67.7%
- 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 SFO and SFO 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.