Route reliability record

SJU→MCO

San Juan to Orlando

Flights: 6,048
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 1,188 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 6,048 flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 2,067 at 81.6% on time.

Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 81.6% on time across 2,067 flights.

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,965 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.01%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Southwest

81.6% on time across 2,067 flights

These figures cover 6,048 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 SJU to MCO

The four carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on SJU to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	2,067	81.6%	47 min	0.53%	B+
Frontier Airlines	1,240	78.9%	138 min	1.37%	B
Spirit Airlines	611	77.1%	78 min	1.80%	B
JetBlue Airways	2,130	76.9%	72 min	1.03%	B

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 81.6%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 23 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1,193 flights91.3%
8am–11am788 flights89.2%
11am–2pm902 flights82.5%
2pm–5pm1,030 flights68.0%
5pm–8pm767 flights68.6%
8pm–5am1,368 flights73.9%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.3% of the time, against 68.0% for the afternoon window. That is 23 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 1,368 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 15 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.

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

August is the worst month at 71.8% on time, 15 points below November, the best at 86.4%. 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 622 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.7%. 11 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 62% of the 99,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
62%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
0%
Security
0%

62% 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 99,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 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 98,827 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 91.3% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

7.4% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,188 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 73.0% on time across 6,054 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 6,048 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.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 86.4% on time and August 71.8%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 5,965 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

SJU to MCO questions

How often is SJU to MCO delayed?

About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.1% of the 6,048 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on SJU to MCO?

Southwest Airlines leads at 81.6% on time across 2,067 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 76.9%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on SJU to MCO?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 68.0%, 23 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 August delays on SJU to MCO?

August is the weakest month at 71.8% on time, compared with 86.4% in November. Across the year that is 15 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. SJU to MCO and MCO to SJU are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures