Carrier route record

WNSTL→MCO

Southwest Airlines · St. Louis to Orlando

Flights: 2,092
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 84%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on STL to MCO lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 2,092 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 Southwest on STL to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,066 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.62%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.0%

Every carrier on STL to MCO, 2,497 flights

These figures cover 2,092 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

Southwest against every carrier on STL to MCO

Southwest flew 2,092 of the 2,497 flights on STL to MCO, most of the route. Its 79.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 90.0% to Frontier at 72.6%. One 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 STL to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	10	90.0%	25 min	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	2,092	79.0%	59 min	0.62%	B+
Frontier Airlines	395	72.6%	77 min	2.78%	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 30 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–8am506 flights93.7%
8am–11am382 flights84.7%
11am–2pm241 flights79.0%
2pm–5pm398 flights68.9%
5pm–8pm440 flights70.1%
8pm–5am125 flights64.2%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.2% on time, against 93.7% for the 5am–8am 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 506 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on STL to MCO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 72.2% on time, against 87.5% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 212 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.6%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 26,000 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
45%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

45% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 25,631 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 93.7% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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

6.8% 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 882 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 runs 77.6% on time across 2,081 flights, within about 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 2,092 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 Southwest on STL to MCO

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 87.5% on time and December 72.2%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,066 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