Carrier route record
WNMCO→SJU
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to San Juan
- Flights
- 2,067
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- 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 SJU sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,067 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 2,134 at 76.4% on time.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.4% on time across 2,134 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,053 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.0%
Every carrier on MCO to SJU, 6,054 flights
These figures cover 2,067 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to SJU
Southwest flew 2,067 of the 6,054 flights on MCO to SJU, about 34% of it. Its 69.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 76.4% to Southwest at 69.8%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| 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 (this page) | 2,067 | 69.8% | 51 min | 0.63% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 76.4%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 55 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am370 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am266 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm353 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm348 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm327 flights64.3%
- 8pm–5am403 flights38.1%
Scale runs 30% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 38.1% on time, against 93.5% 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 403 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to SJU through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.0% 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 248 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.8%. 12 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 50% of the 31,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 31,000 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 31,254 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 11,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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 costs
7.2% 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 about 50 minutes, 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 81.6% on time across 2,067 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,067 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 Southwest on MCO to SJU
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 84.0% on time and March 58.8%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,053 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to SJU, every carrier
- Southwest on SJU to MCO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to SJU76.4%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to SJU73.6%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to SJU70.9%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.