Route reliability record
SLC→MCO
Salt Lake City to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,530
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,931 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,530 SLC to MCO flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to MCO: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Monday flights 86.8%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,504 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
82.9% on time across 1,415 flights
These figures cover 1,530 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
Which airline is most reliable on SLC 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 85.7% | 46 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,415 | 82.9% | 56 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 73.9% | 68 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 71.4% | 48 min | 2.00% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC 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 23 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–8am21 flights—
- 8am–11am375 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm397 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm37 flights63.9%
- 5pm–8pm365 flights80.4%
- 8pm–5am335 flights86.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 86.5% on time across 335 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 397 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 68.1% on time, 28 points below November, the best at 95.8%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.4%. 7 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. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 15,000 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.
- 42%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 6,215 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,693 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, 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 4.7% 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 1,931 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 runs 82.8% on time across 1,530 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,530 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. November runs 95.8% on time and July 68.1%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,504 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to MCO questions
How often is SLC to MCO delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.6% of the 1,530 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SLC to MCO compared with the rest of the country?
82.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SLC to MCO?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 63.9%, 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 July delays on SLC to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 68.1% on time, compared with 95.8% in November. Across the year that is 28 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 SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record85.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record82.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SLC to MCO and MCO to SLC 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.