Route reliability record
MSP→MCO
Minneapolis to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,940
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,310 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,940 MSP to MCO flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.8%, against 75.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,908 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
75.6% on time across 1,866 flights
These figures cover 1,940 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 MSP to MCO
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 56 | 77.4% | 123 min | 5.36% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,866 | 75.6% | 76 min | 1.29% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 61.1% | 69 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to MCO
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 19 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–8am368 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am485 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm369 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm294 flights67.9%
- 5pm–8pm272 flights68.2%
- 8pm–5am152 flights71.7%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.0% of the time, against 67.9% for the afternoon window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 485 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
January is the weak month at 62.2% on time, against 86.1% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 237 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.7%. 16 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. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 36,000 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 20,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 36,074 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
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. 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,310 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 77.6% on time across 1,942 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,940 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 86.1% on time and January 62.2%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,908 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to MCO questions
How often is MSP to MCO delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.5% of the 1,940 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to MCO compared with the rest of the country?
75.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.9%, 19 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 January delays on MSP to MCO?
January is the weakest month at 62.2% on time, compared with 86.1% in October. Across the year that is 24 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
- MCO to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record61.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MSP to MCO and MCO to MSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.