Carrier route record
WNRIC→MCO
Southwest Airlines · Richmond to Orlando
- Flights
- 320
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on RIC to MCO lands a B+, about a point 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 320 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on RIC to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 315 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.8%
Every carrier on RIC to MCO, 1,202 flights
These figures cover 320 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 RIC to MCO
Southwest flew 320 of the 1,202 flights on RIC to MCO, about 27% of it. Its 76.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.5% to Spirit at 56.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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 |
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 47 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–8am184 flights89.5%
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm65 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm50 flights42.9%
- 5pm–8pm19 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.5% of the time, against 42.9% for the afternoon window. That is 47 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 184 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on RIC to MCO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202575 flights69.3%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights74.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.0%
- Apr–Jun 202665 flights75.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 76.5% on time across 320 flights.
Southwest on RIC to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 86.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.3%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 80 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.2%. 33 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 4,427 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
32% 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 1,420 minutes out of 4,427, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,427 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 89.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.62%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% 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 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 60.3% on time across 320 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 320 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 RIC to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 320 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 76.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 315 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RIC to MCO, every carrier
- Southwest on MCO to RIC, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on RIC to MCO74.2%
- Spirit Airlines on RIC to MCO56.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.