Carrier performance at one airport
DL→MCO
Delta Air Lines at Orlando International
- Departures
- 21,571
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Routes
- 13
- Rank here
- #2 of 10
Delta Air Lines at Orlando lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 21,571 flights, of which United Airlines flew 15,054 at 81.5% on time.
Measured against the airport rather than the country, Delta Air Lines runs 3 points ahead of the 74.6% weighted average across all carriers at MCO. That is the comparison worth making: every operator here works the same runways, the same airspace and the same weather.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
21,104 completed departures
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed flights only
Cancelled
1.94%
At MCO, this carrier only
Rank here
#2
Of 10 carriers clearing the floor at MCO
These figures cover 22,000 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Against the competition
Every carrier at MCO, ranked
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 81.5% of the time; Allegiant Air manages 67.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 407 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 15,054 | 81.5% | 83 min | 1.11% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 21,571 | 77.9% | 83 min | 1.94% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 2,396 | 77.7% | 58 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 19,073 | 76.3% | 79 min | 1.68% | B |
| Republic Airways | 404 | 75.8% | 60 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 19,654 | 74.4% | 90 min | 1.97% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 51,275 | 72.6% | 57 min | 1.12% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 18,799 | 71.3% | 77 min | 2.72% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 11,307 | 70.1% | 67 min | 4.34% | C− |
| Allegiant Air | 407 | 67.8% | 93 min | 1.72% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Route by route
Where Delta Air Lines flies from MCO
Delta Air Lines operates 13 routes out of MCO with enough volume to report. Route records inside one carrier at one airport still spread widely, because a short shuttle and a transcontinental have very different exposure to a late inbound.
| Route | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCO to ATL · Atlanta | 5,531 | 78.3% | 88 min | 1.39% | B |
| MCO to DTW · Detroit | 2,211 | 74.5% | 80 min | 0.86% | C+ |
| MCO to LGA · New York | 2,162 | 75.7% | 75 min | 4.53% | B− |
| MCO to JFK · New York | 1,981 | 77.9% | 83 min | 3.23% | B− |
| MCO to MSP · Minneapolis | 1,861 | 77.9% | 91 min | 1.29% | B |
| MCO to SLC · Salt Lake City | 1,409 | 82.4% | 76 min | 0.71% | B+ |
| MCO to LAX · Los Angeles | 1,383 | 84.5% | 72 min | 1.30% | B |
| MCO to BOS · Boston | 1,257 | 77.0% | 72 min | 2.23% | B |
| MCO to RDU · Raleigh | 1,025 | 78.6% | 86 min | 2.24% | B |
| MCO to CVG · Cincinnati | 721 | 73.6% | 89 min | 1.66% | C |
| MCO to SEA · Seattle | 719 | 76.7% | 61 min | 1.39% | B |
| MCO to DCA · Washington | 710 | 76.2% | 75 min | 3.80% | B− |
| MCO to AUS · Austin | 598 | 78.4% | 116 min | 1.34% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta Air Lines flight numbers from MCO
25 Delta Air Lines flight numbers leaving MCO flew their main route often enough to have a record of their own. Grouped by destination.
- DL 1150to ATL 17:3058.0%
- DL 1463to ATL 08:0088.6%
- DL 1494to ATL 06:1594.2%
- DL 1505to ATL 09:0088.9%
- DL 1548to ATL 05:3094.7%
- DL 1576to ATL 15:1572.9%
- DL 2080to ATL 07:0089.6%
- DL 2204to ATL 10:0088.3%
- DL 2259to AUS 12:2482.8%
- DL 2436to BOS 07:0094.7%
- DL 1201to DTW 06:0092.3%
- DL 2845to DTW 08:2090.6%
- DL 2049to JFK 11:0581.1%
- DL 2693to JFK 07:4087.4%
- DL 2702to JFK 06:0092.1%
- DL 484to LAX 06:0594.5%
- DL 504to LAX 09:4591.9%
- DL 1208to MSP 15:0072.7%
- DL 1250to MSP 07:0092.2%
- DL 1730to MSP 07:5091.1%
- DL 1312to RDU 14:1075.1%
- DL 1370to RDU 21:2471.0%
- DL 347to SEA 09:0086.1%
- DL 2025to SLC 07:0093.6%
- DL 2031to SLC 10:3084.1%
Departure window
Best time of day for this operation
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am3,780 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am3,610 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm4,014 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm3,973 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm3,826 flights66.8%
- 8pm–5am2,368 flights65.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 65.4% for the overnight window. That is 28 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 4,014 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Seasonal pattern
July is the worst month at 68.2% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 87.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 2,033 flights.
Delay causes
What holds this operation up
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 384,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 384,494 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
21,571 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.8% on time and July 68.2%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 21,104 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
Delta Air Lines at MCO
How often is Delta Air Lines at MCO delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.1% of the 21,571 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on Delta Air Lines at MCO?
United Airlines leads at 81.5% on time across 15,054 flights. Allegiant Air is at the other end on 67.8%, a gap of 14 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on Delta Air Lines at MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.4%, 28 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 July delays on Delta Air Lines at MCO?
July is the weakest month at 68.2% on time, compared with 87.8% in September. Across the year that is 20 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
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.