Flight number record

DL 1003

Delta Air Lines · Washington to Orlando

Route: DCA → MCO
Departs: 06:59
Flights: 352
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1003, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1003 lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 352 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

80.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 332 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 352 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When DL 1003 flies

DL 1003 flies DCA to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:59, used on 127 of 352 flights, with 13:50 (84 flights) and 07:00 (44 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:59127 flights36.1%
Departs 13:5084 flights23.9%
Departs 07:0044 flights12.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 06:59 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1003 runs 9 points worse at 80.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1003 next to DCA to MCO

Every carrier on DCA to MCO combined arrived on time 74.9% of the time across 4,588 flights, so DL 1003 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 713 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 1003 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1003thin sample	352	80.7%	88 min	4.55%	B−
All Delta Air Lines on DCA–MCO	713	78.0%	88 min	3.65%	B−
All carriers on DCA–MCO	4,588	74.9%	83 min	2.18%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1003 quarter by quarter

DL 1003 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 88.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 65.4%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 88 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202587 flights65.4%
Oct–Dec 202584 flights81.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.2%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1003 did best on Saturday at 87.8% on time and worst on Thursday at 69.4%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1003 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 5,638 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.

Carrier
50%
National Airspace System
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,794 of the 5,638 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,638 delay minutes reported on DL 1003.

Cancellations run at 4.55%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 759 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 same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including MCO to DCA (194), but none flew often enough under DL 1003 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to MCO only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 352 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.

What to do with this

Booking DL 1003

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 1003: 4.55% of its 352 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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.

Key figures