The Airline with the MOST Flight Delays and Cancellations

Disney4me · March 7, 2023

Part of having an enjoyable Disney trip is a smooth trip to Orlando. Starting off on the right foot will put you in the vacation mindset before you even step in the parks!

©Delta

Not all airlines are created equal, though. When you are deciding on which airline to pick, you should consider not only their prices and availability but also their reputation when it comes to delays and cancellations.

The last thing you want when headed to Disney World is a delayed — or worse, cancelled — flight. While you won’t ever have absolute control over when your flight will take off or arrive, you can take a look at the track record of different airlines to find out in general how reliable they are. This can alleviate a lot of the stress you may feel when traveling.

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You want an airline you can trust

We used data from FlightAware to look at the most recent numbers for several popular airlines that serve Orlando International Airport, where many Disney World guests fly. Let’s see which airline comes out on top!

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Orlando International Airport

American Airlines had around 93,000 scheduled flights in a one month timespan. During this time, they cancelled just over 2,200 flights, making up 2.4% of all of their flights. However, the popular airline had almost 19,500 delays with an average delay time of just under an hour.

©American Airlines

Delta, another mainstream airline, had about 10,000 less flights in the same time period. They only cancelled about 1.5% of their flights and while they experienced a similar average delay time to American, their percentage of delays was much lower (16% versus 21%).

©Delta

United had even less cancellations. Out of roughly 70,000 flights, 755 were cancelled, making up 1.1%. Their average delay time was a little shorter than the other two major airlines at around 45 minutes, but they did have 14,000 delays, representing 20% of their total flights.

©Getty Images

Let’s take a look at some of the budget airlines! Will they perform any better or worse than the larger companies? Frontier had around 14,000 flights and only 200 were cancelled, similar to Delta’s percentage. However, Frontier had a higher percentage of delays than the other airlines! During this period they had over 4,000 delayed flights which made up almost 30% of their total! The average delay was around 50 minutes, so not much different than the others.

©Frontier Airlines

Spirit Airlines flew about 25,000 flights and out of those only 305 were cancelled, making up a surprisingly low 1.3%. What about delays? Again, the percentage of delays for this budget airline was much higher than for the mainstream airlines. About 5,500 of their flights were delayed for 50 minutes on average, comprising 24% of the total flights.

©Spirit Airlines

Last but not least, we decided to check out Southwest, who has recently been adding more flights to Orlando. They completed a staggering 110,000 flights during this time period, with 2,700 cancelled representing 2.4% of their total flights. The percentage of delays for Southwest was the second lowest out of all of these airlines at 17%, and they also had the lowest average delay time at 30 minutes.

©Southwest

So, which airline is the best? Let’s take a look at all of the data:

There are plenty other factors to consider when choosing an airline, but it’s good to have an idea of recent delays and cancellation numbers to know what you’re getting yourself into. Be sure to keep checking in to our website for more travel information that can help you on your future trips!