Route profile
BUF→MCO
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Buffalo to Orlando, 1,011 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 46% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 5,431 flights. How this is calculated
BUF → MCO arrives on time 78.8% of the time; the return trip, MCO → BUF, arrives on time 73.0% of the time, a 5.8-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
BUF → MCO spends 24.6 minutes on the ground on a 1,011-mile trip: 13.9 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at BUF and 10.7 minutes from touchdown to gate at MCO.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why BUF → MCO flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
BUF → MCO cancelled 78 of 5,431 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 70. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 74.4% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 94 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 78 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
58 cancellations, 74.4% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
18 cancellations, 23.1% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
2 cancellations, 2.6% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
78 coded cancellations were recorded on BUF → MCO; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
43 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 5,431 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at MCO after arriving from BUF.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 36% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 20% | High risk |
| 60 min | 14% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 7.4% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.5% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.44% of the time and diverts 0.33% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 5,335 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 43 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 5,431 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
BUF → MCO flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 88.9% of the time, against 66.9% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 22.0 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 96.0% on time from 429 flights
- 6 AM: 91.5% on time from 615 flights
- 7 AM: 87.3% on time from 499 flights
- 8 AM: 81.4% on time from 528 flights
- 9 AM: 82.1% on time from 141 flights
- 10 AM: 82.7% on time from 248 flights
- 11 AM: 81.0% on time from 417 flights
- 12 PM: 77.7% on time from 361 flights
- 1 PM: 75.0% on time from 287 flights
- 2 PM: too few flights to score
- 3 PM: 70.3% on time from 192 flights
- 4 PM: 67.7% on time from 258 flights
- 5 PM: 67.8% on time from 357 flights
- 6 PM: 62.4% on time from 329 flights
- 7 PM: 72.9% on time from 337 flights
- 8 PM: 64.2% on time from 182 flights
- 9 PM: 66.9% on time from 165 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why BUF → MCO runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for BUF → MCO. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on BUF → MCO, at 51.6%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 88.9% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 66.9%.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,807 | 79.2% | 0.96% | -5 min | 6.4% |
| JetBlue | 1,486 | 80.6% | 1.55% | -9 min | 7.1% |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,138 | 75.6% | 2.46% | -11 min | 10.8% |
Southwest Airlines flew 51.7% of the 5,431 flights listed. Frontier Airlines cancelled 2.46% of its flights here against 0.96% for Southwest Airlines.
JetBlue arrived on time 5.0 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| B685 JetBlue | 6:00 AM | 1,122 | 84.7% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 11.0 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 74.5%
- Feb: 77.3%
- Mar: 76.1%
- Apr: 85.0%
- May: 82.3%
- Jun: 81.6%
- Jul: 71.4%
- Aug: 74.4%
- Sep: 81.2%
- Oct: 86.0%
- Nov: 85.5%
- Dec: 72.1%
July is historically the weakest month and October the strongest, a spread of 14.6 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: too few flights to score (105)
- August 2023: 64.9% from 120 flights
- September 2023: 76.7% from 130 flights
- October 2023: 83.0% from 142 flights
- November 2023: 86.5% from 156 flights
- December 2023: 82.0% from 151 flights
- January 2024: 66.4% from 144 flights
- February 2024: 82.4% from 153 flights
- March 2024: 74.3% from 194 flights
- April 2024: 81.8% from 156 flights
- May 2024: 78.6% from 143 flights
- June 2024: too few flights to score (98)
- July 2024: too few flights to score (91)
- August 2024: 80.8% from 131 flights
- September 2024: 84.8% from 125 flights
- October 2024: 86.4% from 120 flights
- November 2024: 92.5% from 133 flights
- December 2024: 75.3% from 162 flights
- January 2025: 80.2% from 173 flights
- February 2025: 74.3% from 179 flights
- March 2025: 84.4% from 212 flights
- April 2025: 94.6% from 207 flights
- May 2025: 84.1% from 184 flights
- June 2025: too few flights to score (113)
- July 2025: too few flights to score (117)
- August 2025: 76.0% from 151 flights
- September 2025: too few flights to score (118)
- October 2025: 88.8% from 135 flights
- November 2025: 78.5% from 159 flights
- December 2025: 60.4% from 175 flights
- January 2026: 74.8% from 143 flights
- February 2026: 75.7% from 152 flights
- March 2026: 68.2% from 185 flights
- April 2026: 76.3% from 169 flights
- May 2026: 83.7% from 153 flights
- June 2026: too few flights to score (116)
- July 2026: 70.8% from 136 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 75.7% against 83.2% in the 12 months before — declining by 7.5 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 5,431 BUF → MCO flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed