Carrier route record

WNSAT→MCO

Southwest Airlines · San Antonio to Orlando

Flights: 747
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 68%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on SAT to MCO lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five 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 747 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

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

On time

77.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 742 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.40%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.4%

Every carrier on SAT to MCO, 1,100 flights

These figures cover 747 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on SAT to MCO

Southwest flew 747 of the 1,100 flights on SAT to MCO, most of the route. Its 77.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 77.9% to Frontier at 73.5%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SAT to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	747	77.9%	57 min	0.40%	B+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	254	77.5%	101 min	5.91%	B−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	99	73.5%	115 min	1.01%	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 39 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–8am312 flights92.6%
8am–11am75 flights94.7%
11am–2pm68 flights71.6%
2pm–5pm156 flights62.6%
5pm–8pm109 flights56.1%
8pm–5am27 flights—

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

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 94.7% for the 8am–11am 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 312 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on SAT to MCO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, August worst

August is the worst month at 71.9% on time, 16 points below September, the best at 88.2%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 73.6%. 9 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 9,319 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

37% 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 9,319 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 9,319 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 3,504 minutes out of 9,319, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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

6.2% 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 1,041 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 73.5% on time across 762 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 747 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 SAT to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 747 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 77.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 742 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