Carrier route record

WNPHL→MCO

Southwest Airlines · Philadelphia to Orlando

Flights: 641
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 4

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

Southwest on PHL to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten 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 641 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,581 at 73.6% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.6% on time across 2,581 flights.

On time

72.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 629 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.94%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.4%

Every carrier on PHL to MCO, 5,334 flights

These figures cover 641 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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

Southwest against every carrier on PHL to MCO

Southwest flew 641 of the 5,334 flights on PHL to MCO, about 12% of it. Its 72.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 73.6% to Frontier at 70.2%.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHL to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	2,581	73.6%	77 min	1.98%	C
Spirit Airlines	583	73.0%	67 min	5.83%	C−
Southwest Airlines (this page)	641	72.3%	59 min	0.94%	C+
Frontier Airlines	1,529	70.2%	107 min	2.16%	C

Spirit Airlines cancels 5.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 44 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am213 flights87.2%
8am–11am37 flights94.3%
11am–2pm140 flights74.8%
2pm–5pm89 flights64.8%
5pm–8pm162 flights50.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 94.3% for the 8am–11am 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 213 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on PHL to MCO through the year

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

September is the best month on the calendar at 88.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 68 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.9%. 24 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 44% of the 10,000 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
44%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
0%

44% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 10,314 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 3,639 minutes out of 10,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

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

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.4% 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 862 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 68.1% on time across 643 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 641 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 PHL to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 641 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 72.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 629 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