Flight number record
DL 2561
Delta Air Lines · New York to Orlando
- Route
- LGA → MCO
- Departs
- 17:55
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2561, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2561 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 2561 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 99 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.23%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 2561 flies
DL 2561 flies LGA to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:55, used on 109 of 363 flights, with 17:59 (70 flights) and 17:50 (60 flights) next.
- Departs 17:55109 flights30.0%
- Departs 17:5970 flights19.3%
- Departs 17:5060 flights16.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 17:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 2561 runs level with that at 67.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 2561 next to LGA to MCO
Every carrier on LGA to MCO combined arrived on time 70.1% of the time across 5,149 flights, so DL 2561 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 2,161 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2561thin sample | 363 | 67.4% | 72 min | 5.23% | C− |
| All Delta Air Lines on LGA–MCO | 2,161 | 72.4% | 70 min | 4.58% | C− |
| All carriers on LGA–MCO | 5,149 | 70.1% | 81 min | 4.68% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2561 quarter by quarter
DL 2561 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 86.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 56.8%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 73 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 202530 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights56.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights75.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights68.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights60.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 2561 did best on Friday at 76.0% on time and worst on Monday at 53.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2561 runs when it is late
DL 2561 often beats the schedule: 117 of 344 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 112 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 53 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early117 flights34.0%
- Within 15 min115 flights33.4%
- 15–29 min late27 flights7.8%
- 30–59 min late32 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late35 flights10.2%
- 2+ hours late18 flights5.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 344 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
32 of 123 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. In the other direction, 21 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at MCO.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2561
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 July 2026, 4 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 July 2026 | 4 hours 23 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 23 June 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 August 2026 | 4 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 November 2025 | 3 hours 58 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 February 2026 | 3 hours 21 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 2561 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 8,008 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,008 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 to one. The split is drawn from 8,008 delay minutes reported on DL 2561.
Cancellations run at 5.23%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
15.4% 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.
The 950 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.
Every one of the 363 flights under DL 2561 in the data flew LGA to MCO. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 2561
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2561: 5.23% of its 363 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to MCO, every carrier and departure
- MCO to LGA, the return direction
- JetBlue Airways 499 on the same route66.7%
- Delta Air Lines 2520 on the same route59.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2564 on the same route80.2%
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.