Route reliability record

MCO→SJU

Orlando to San Juan

Flights: 6,054
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 1,188 mi
Carriers: 4

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 6,054 flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 2,134 at 76.4% on time.

JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.4% on time across 2,134 flights.

On time

73.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,994 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.94%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

JetBlue

76.4% on time across 2,134 flights

These figures cover 6,054 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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 76.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,067 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to SJU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways	2,134	76.4%	70 min	0.98%	B+
Frontier Airlines	1,242	73.6%	80 min	1.37%	C
Spirit Airlines	611	70.9%	60 min	0.98%	C+
Southwest Airlines	2,067	69.8%	51 min	0.63%	C+

JetBlue leads Southwest by 7 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 37 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1,254 flights92.8%
8am–11am867 flights83.2%
11am–2pm929 flights73.5%
2pm–5pm731 flights70.1%
5pm–8pm924 flights63.6%
8pm–5am1,349 flights55.7%

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 92.8% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 1,349 flights scheduled in it.

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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, March worst

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. July was the busiest month here, with 623 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.0%. 10 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 47% of the 102,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

47% 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 102,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 102,413 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 37,000 of the 102,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

8.8% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 78.9% on time across 6,048 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 6,054 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. 5,994 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

MCO to SJU questions

How often is MCO to SJU delayed?

About 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 27.0% of the 6,054 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 SJU?

JetBlue Airways leads at 76.4% on time across 2,134 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 69.8%, a gap of 7 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 92.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.7%, 37 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.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures