Route reliability record
RIC→MCO
Richmond to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,202
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 667 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,202 RIC to MCO flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly RIC to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.0%, against 71.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,172 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
74.2% on time across 676 flights
These figures cover 1,202 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 RIC 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 320 | 76.5% | 60 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 19 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 676 | 74.2% | 82 min | 2.37% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 202 | 56.4% | 85 min | 2.48% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on RIC 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 38 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–8am244 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am162 flights84.2%
- 11am–2pm285 flights75.1%
- 2pm–5pm193 flights60.8%
- 5pm–8pm122 flights51.3%
- 8pm–5am196 flights58.1%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.3% on time, against 89.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 285 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
February is the weak month at 58.7% on time, against 88.8% in September. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.7%. 23 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 50% of the 26,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
50% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 25,620 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.50%.
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. 11.0% 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 667 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 68.7% on time across 1,202 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 1,202 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 88.8% on time and February 58.7%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,172 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to MCO questions
How often is RIC to MCO delayed?
Roughly 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 28.2% of the 1,202 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is RIC to MCO compared with the rest of the country?
71.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RIC to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.3%, 38 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 February delays on RIC to MCO?
February is the weakest month at 58.7% on time, compared with 88.8% in September. Across the year that is 30 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on RIC to MCO76.5%
- JetBlue Airways on RIC to MCO74.2%
- Spirit Airlines on RIC to MCO56.4%
- RIC to ATL, a related route88.7%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- RIC to CLT, a related route83.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.0%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record74.2%
- 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. RIC to MCO and MCO to RIC 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.