Route profile
IAH→MCO
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Houston to Orlando, 854 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 32% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 11,351 flights. How this is calculated
IAH → MCO arrives on time 77.6% of the time; the return trip, MCO → IAH, arrives on time 78.7% of the time.
IAH → MCO spends 27.8 minutes on the ground on an 854-mile trip: 19.4 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at IAH and 8.3 minutes from touchdown to gate at MCO.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why IAH → MCO flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
IAH → MCO cancelled 159 of 11,351 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 71. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 54.7% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 130 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 159 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.
87 cancellations, 54.7% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
44 cancellations, 27.7% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
28 cancellations, 17.6% 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.
159 coded cancellations were recorded on IAH → MCO; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
57 min late
against a median of 8 min early
IAH → MCO has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 8 min early, but the worst tenth are 65 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 11,351 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at MCO after arriving from IAH.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 35% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 22% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 9.6% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 6.3% | Some 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 1.40% of the time and diverts 0.37% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 11,150 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 57 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 11,351 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
IAH → MCO flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 89.9% of the time, against 65.5% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 24.4 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 89.5% on time from 556 flights
- 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 90.1% on time from 1,114 flights
- 8 AM: 90.6% on time from 377 flights
- 9 AM: 82.1% on time from 883 flights
- 10 AM: 81.4% on time from 521 flights
- 11 AM: 78.6% on time from 237 flights
- 12 PM: 78.7% on time from 1,308 flights
- 1 PM: 74.1% on time from 337 flights
- 2 PM: 74.2% on time from 1,530 flights
- 3 PM: 70.5% on time from 196 flights
- 4 PM: 76.4% on time from 972 flights
- 5 PM: 70.9% on time from 556 flights
- 6 PM: 73.7% on time from 1,224 flights
- 7 PM: 70.8% on time from 547 flights
- 8 PM: 62.2% on time from 643 flights
- 9 PM: 65.1% on time from 254 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why IAH → MCO runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s 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 IAH → MCO. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on IAH → MCO, at 36.7%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 89.9% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 65.5%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
Bad weather raises cancellations by a similar amount at both ends of IAH to MCO: 3.4 times the normal rate at IAH and 3.2 times at MCO. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: IAH 4.1% against 1.2%, MCO 4.0% against 1.3%. Flights that did leave MCO in bad weather arrived on time 54.1% of the time, against 76.3% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | IAH | MCO |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 4.1% | 4.0% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.2% | 1.3% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 63.8% | 54.1% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 78.6% | 76.3% |
| Departures in bad weather | 28,922 | 33,297 |
Of the carriers on this route, United Airlines (3.4% cancelled against 5.2% for the other carriers at IAH) cancelled the fewest departures from IAH in bad weather and Frontier Airlines (5.0% cancelled against 3.8% for the other carriers at IAH) the most. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from IAH to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at IAH
All departures from IAH| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 17,078 | 3.4%below the others | 5.2% |
| Spirit Airlines | 2,056 | 4.3%about level | 4.4% |
| Frontier Airlines | 915 | 5.0%above the others | 3.8% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from IAH and MCO, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from IAH on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: IAH (airlines), MCO, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 7,114 | 79.6% | 1.19% | -8 min | 8.8% |
| Spirit Airlines | 2,381 | 76.1% | 2.02% | -9 min | 10.3% |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,408 | 69.9% | 1.63% | -7 min | 14.0% |
| Southwest Airlines | 448 | 78.6% | 0.67% | -7 min | 7.2% |
United Airlines flew 62.7% of the 11,351 flights listed. Spirit Airlines cancelled 2.02% of its flights here against 0.67% for Southwest Airlines.
United Airlines arrived on time 9.7 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.
UA2245 (7:20 AM) arrived on time 91.1% of the time, 13.9 points more often than UA496 (2:35 PM) at 77.2%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 82.1%
- Feb: 86.2%
- Mar: 76.9%
- Apr: 83.2%
- May: 72.0%
- Jun: 66.0%
- Jul: 62.3%
- Aug: 68.8%
- Sep: 84.6%
- Oct: 84.7%
- Nov: 84.9%
- Dec: 82.5%
July is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 23.9 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 65.5% from 330 flights
- August 2023: 69.4% from 274 flights
- September 2023: 77.9% from 281 flights
- October 2023: 79.9% from 304 flights
- November 2023: 83.8% from 357 flights
- December 2023: 83.3% from 384 flights
- January 2024: 71.5% from 332 flights
- February 2024: 88.7% from 301 flights
- March 2024: 72.7% from 369 flights
- April 2024: 80.3% from 300 flights
- May 2024: 62.2% from 310 flights
- June 2024: 62.0% from 305 flights
- July 2024: 52.2% from 319 flights
- August 2024: 71.4% from 303 flights
- September 2024: 86.0% from 288 flights
- October 2024: 87.8% from 308 flights
- November 2024: 87.7% from 325 flights
- December 2024: 80.3% from 296 flights
- January 2025: 84.9% from 271 flights
- February 2025: 80.5% from 262 flights
- March 2025: 79.5% from 324 flights
- April 2025: 81.6% from 269 flights
- May 2025: 71.0% from 310 flights
- June 2025: 62.8% from 297 flights
- July 2025: 64.7% from 304 flights
- August 2025: 65.6% from 300 flights
- September 2025: 90.0% from 271 flights
- October 2025: 86.6% from 308 flights
- November 2025: 83.3% from 290 flights
- December 2025: 83.6% from 319 flights
- January 2026: 89.9% from 350 flights
- February 2026: 88.5% from 318 flights
- March 2026: 79.0% from 366 flights
- April 2026: 87.4% from 312 flights
- May 2026: 83.8% from 274 flights
- June 2026: 74.2% from 257 flights
- July 2026: 67.2% from 263 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 81.9% against 78.1% in the 12 months before — improving by 3.8 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 11,351 IAH → 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