Carrier route record
ASSAN→MCO
Alaska Airlines · San Diego to Orlando
- Flights
- 629
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SAN 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 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 629 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on SAN 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 622 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on SAN to MCO, 1,067 flights
These figures cover 629 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Alaska against every carrier on SAN to MCO
Alaska flew 629 of the 1,067 flights on SAN to MCO, most of the route. Its 76.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 77.7% to Alaska at 76.5%.
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 | 438 | 77.7% | 44 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 629 | 76.5% | 50 min | 0.79% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on SAN to MCO
Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 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–8am—
- 8am–11am331 flights71.3%
- 11am–2pm34 flights63.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am264 flights84.7%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 63.6% on time against 84.7% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 331 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SAN to MCO through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 48.3%. June is the strongest month at 91.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 43 points. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.1%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska 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 7,285 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
35% 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 7,285 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 7,285 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 3,030 minutes out of 7,285, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.6% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,149 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.9% on time across 629 flights, 4 points above 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. 629 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 Alaska on SAN to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 629 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. 622 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to MCO, every carrier
- Alaska on MCO to SAN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to MCO77.7%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.