Carrier route record

WNMIA→MCO

Southwest Airlines · Miami to Orlando

Flights: 577
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on MIA to MCO earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 577 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's MIA to MCO record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 571 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.87%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.1%

Every carrier on MIA to MCO, 3,804 flights

These figures cover 577 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 MIA to MCO

Southwest flew 577 of the 3,804 flights on MIA to MCO, about 15% of it. Its 85.8% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 85.8% to American at 69.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MIA to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	577	85.8%	72 min	0.87%	A+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	234	74.8%	67 min	0.00%	C+
American Airlines	2,993	69.2%	73 min	1.10%	C

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 25 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–8am313 flights97.1%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm262 flights72.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.1% of the time, against 72.2% for the evening window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 313 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on MIA to MCO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, August worst

August is the worst month at 70.4% on time, 24 points below June, the best at 93.9%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.2%. 11 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 43% of the 5,827 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
43%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

43% 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 5,827 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 5,827 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 2,034 minutes out of 5,827, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.87%, 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

6.7% 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 192 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.3% on time across 579 flights, 18 points below 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 18 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 577 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 MIA to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 577 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 571 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures