Route reliability record
MCO→SJU
Orlando to San Juan
- Flights
- 6,037
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 1,188 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 6,037 flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 2,097 at 76.1% on time.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 2,097 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,981 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
JetBlue
76.1% on time across 2,097 flights
These figures cover 6,037 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 SJU
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 76.1% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 69.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 669 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 2,097 | 76.1% | 71 min | 0.95% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,214 | 72.3% | 80 min | 1.32% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,057 | 70.8% | 50 min | 0.53% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 669 | 69.8% | 60 min | 0.90% | C+ |
JetBlue leads Spirit by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 38 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,241 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am904 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm906 flights72.7%
- 2pm–5pm703 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm915 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am1,368 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 93.2% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 82.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.2%. 13 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 46% of the 104,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 104,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 39,000 of the 104,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, below the national 1.80% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 1,188 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 79.4% on time across 6,034 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 6,037 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.
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 82.6% on time and March 65.3%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else.
Common questions
MCO to SJU questions
How often is MCO to SJU delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.2% of the 6,037 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to SJU?
JetBlue Airways leads at 76.1% on time across 2,097 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 69.8%, a gap of 6 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 SJU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.6%, 38 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 March delays on MCO to SJU?
March is the weakest month at 65.3% on time, compared with 82.6% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- SJU to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on-time record76.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.8%
- 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 SJU and SJU to MCO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.