Route reliability record
SFO→MCO
San Francisco to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,452
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,446 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,452 SFO to MCO flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.6%, against 85.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,436 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
86.6% on time across 1,063 flights
These figures cover 1,452 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,063 | 86.6% | 55 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 340 | 84.5% | 56 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 49 | 54.3% | 103 min | 6.12% | F− |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO 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 20 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–8am265 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am417 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm158 flights85.4%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am528 flights80.3%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 73.8% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 528 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
July is the worst month at 71.9% on time, 25 points below October, the best at 97.0%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.2%. 6 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 44% of the 13,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
44% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 12,784 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,468 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,446 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 77.6% on time across 1,454 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,452 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. October runs 97.0% on time and July 71.9%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,436 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to MCO questions
How often is SFO to MCO delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.9% of the 1,452 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SFO to MCO compared with the rest of the country?
85.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 73.8%, 20 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 July delays on SFO to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 71.9% on time, compared with 97.0% in October. Across the year that is 25 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 SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SFO to MCO86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to MCO84.5%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- United Airlines on-time record86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record84.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record54.3%
- 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. SFO to MCO and MCO to SFO 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.