Carrier route record
WNMHT→MCO
Southwest Airlines · Manchester to Orlando
- Flights
- 502
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MHT to MCO lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 502 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MHT to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 495 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on MHT to MCO, 868 flights
These figures cover 502 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MHT to MCO
Southwest flew 502 of the 868 flights on MHT to MCO, most of the route. Its 78.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 78.6% to JetBlue at 76.3%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 502 | 78.6% | 57 min | 0.60% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 366 | 76.3% | 69 min | 1.64% | B |
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 45 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–8am197 flights88.8%
- 8am–11am66 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm120 flights80.3%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights64.6%
- 5pm–8pm32 flights43.8%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 43.8% on time, against 88.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 197 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MHT to MCO through the year
December is the weak month at 62.9% on time, against 88.5% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.1%. 23 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
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 6,084 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% 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 2,234 minutes out of 6,084, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,084 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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
6.9% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,142 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 runs 78.6% on time across 502 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 502 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 MHT to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 502 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 78.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 495 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.