Route reliability record
SYR→MCO
Syracuse to Orlando
- Flights
- 716
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,053 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 716 SYR to MCO flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly SYR to MCO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.3%, against 73.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 42 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 706 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
75.5% on time across 621 flights
These figures cover 716 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SYR 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 621 | 75.5% | 72 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 95 | 59.1% | 98 min | 2.11% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on SYR 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–8am—
- 8am–11am158 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm188 flights75.8%
- 2pm–5pm37 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm186 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am147 flights65.8%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.4% of the time, against 65.8% for the overnight 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 188 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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.
December is the weak month at 56.3% on time, against 91.4% in May. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 72 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%. 19 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 47% of the 14,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
47% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 14,489 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,053 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 79.8% on time across 717 flights, 6 points above 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 716 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 716 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 73.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 706 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SYR to MCO questions
How often is SYR to MCO delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.6% of the 716 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SYR to MCO compared with the rest of the country?
73.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SYR to MCO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.8%, 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 December delays on SYR to MCO?
December is the weakest month at 56.3% on time, compared with 91.4% in May. Across the year that is 35 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 SYR — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- SYR to ORD, a related route74.0%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- SYR to CLT, a related route80.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record75.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record59.1%
- 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. SYR to MCO and MCO to SYR 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.