Flight number record

DL 2881

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Orlando

Route: ATL → MCO
Departs: 19:20
Flights: 341
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2881, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2881 draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 341 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2881 runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 162 extra late arrivals.

On time

61.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

13.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 341 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 2881 flies

DL 2881 flies ATL to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:20, used on 129 of 341 flights, with 19:30 (47 flights) and 19:25 (43 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 19:20129 flights37.8%
Departs 19:3047 flights13.8%
Departs 19:2543 flights12.6%

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 19:20 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2881 runs 7 points worse at 61.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 2881 next to ATL to MCO

Every carrier on ATL to MCO combined arrived on time 70.7% of the time across 8,211 flights, so DL 2881 is 9 points behind it. Delta flew 5,465 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 70.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 20 points.

DL 2881 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2881thin sample	341	61.4%	66 min	0.29%	D+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–MCO	5,465	70.7%	64 min	1.17%	C
All carriers on ATL–MCO	8,211	70.7%	73 min	1.36%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2881 quarter by quarter

DL 2881 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 67.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 46.1%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 85 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 202577 flights46.1%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights67.4%
Jan–Mar 202683 flights64.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.9%

Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2881 did best on Wednesday at 72.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 39.2%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 33 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2881 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 8,524 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
Extreme weather
8%

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 3,026 of the 8,524 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,524 delay minutes reported on DL 2881.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

Every one of the 341 flights under DL 2881 in the data flew ATL 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. 341 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 2881

For a booking, DL 2881 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.6% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.

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