Carrier route record

WNPVD→MCO

Southwest Airlines · Providence to Orlando

Flights: 900
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 56%
Carriers: 2

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

Southwest on PVD to MCO lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 900 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PVD to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 888 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.1%

Every carrier on PVD to MCO, 1,605 flights

These figures cover 900 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 PVD to MCO

Southwest flew 900 of the 1,605 flights on PVD to MCO, most of the route. Its 77.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 77.4% to JetBlue at 74.6%.

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 PVD to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	900	77.4%	61 min	1.00%	B
JetBlue Airways	705	74.6%	72 min	1.84%	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 37 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–8am362 flights93.0%
8am–11am54 flights88.9%
11am–2pm132 flights71.8%
2pm–5pm117 flights68.1%
5pm–8pm201 flights56.3%
8pm–5am34 flights68.8%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.3% on time, against 93.0% 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 362 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on PVD to MCO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, July worst

July is the worst month at 62.5% on time, 35 points below March, the best at 97.5%. 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 97 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.5%. 12 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
1%

39% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 12,327 reported delay minutes.

38% 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 4,734 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.2% 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 runs 75.3% on time across 901 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 900 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 PVD to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 900 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 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 888 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