Route reliability record
PVD→MCO
Providence to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,605
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,072 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 1,605 PVD to MCO flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 900 at 77.4% on time.
Best time to fly PVD to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.1%, against 76.1% 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
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,576 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.4% on time across 900 flights
These figures cover 1,605 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
Which airline is most reliable on PVD to MCO
The two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 900 | 77.4% | 61 min | 1.00% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 705 | 74.6% | 72 min | 1.84% | C |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 77.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Providence to Orlando
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PVD → MCOProvidence to Orlando | Southwest Airlines | 76.6% | 77.4% | 1.00% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. BOS → MCOBoston to Orlando | Delta Air Lines | 73.8% | 75.4% | 2.15% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1513 20:20 |
| 3. PVD → MCOProvidence to Orlando | JetBlue Airways | 73.2% | 74.6% | 1.84% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. BOS → MCOBoston to Orlando | JetBlue Airways | 65.9% | 67.9% | 2.89% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 2251 07:00 |
| 5. BOS → MCOBoston to Orlando | Spirit Airlines | 60.9% | 63.5% | 4.08% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 31 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am617 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am201 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm150 flights72.3%
- 2pm–5pm222 flights65.4%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am52 flights58.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.0% on time, against 88.9% 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 617 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.
July is the worst month at 62.1% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 85.9%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 174 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.9%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 25,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
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 25,000 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 24,995 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 8,643 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.44%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually 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 1,072 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 73.0% on time across 1,603 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,605 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. September runs 85.9% on time and July 62.1%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,576 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PVD to MCO questions
How often is PVD 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 23.9% of the 1,605 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PVD to MCO?
Southwest Airlines leads at 77.4% on time across 900 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 74.6%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PVD to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.0%, 31 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 July delays on PVD to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 85.9% in September. 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 PVD — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on PVD to MCO77.4%
- JetBlue Airways on PVD to MCO74.6%
- PVD to DCA, a related route73.1%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- PVD to BWI, a related route85.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record74.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PVD to MCO and MCO to PVD 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.