Carrier route record
DLATL→MCO
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Orlando
- Flights
- 5,534
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ATL to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 5,534 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,095 at 74.5% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.5% on time across 1,095 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,441 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on ATL to MCO, 8,267 flights
These figures cover 5,534 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on ATL to MCO
Delta flew 5,534 of the 8,267 flights on ATL to MCO, most of the route. Its 70.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 74.5% to Frontier at 64.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 74.5% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,270 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,095 | 74.5% | 60 min | 1.19% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 368 | 73.5% | 87 min | 4.62% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 5,534 | 70.5% | 65 min | 1.32% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,270 | 64.8% | 117 min | 2.20% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.6% 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.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on ATL to MCO
- DL 165809:2583.4% · 365 flights
- DL 103011:2580.2% · 365 flights
- DL 121308:1586.9% · 365 flights
- DL 149717:1557.1% · 364 flights
- DL 174216:0055.5% · 364 flights
- DL 66410:2584.0% · 363 flights
- DL 115014:5061.3% · 363 flights
- DL 137213:4571.2% · 359 flights
- DL 203518:1556.8% · 351 flights
- DL 288119:2061.5% · 347 flights
- DL 173321:3565.0% · 339 flights
- DL 116222:2067.8% · 336 flights
- DL 220407:1588.1% · 312 flights
- DL 157612:4076.3% · 271 flights
- DL 173520:1563.2% · 254 flights
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am313 flights88.2%
- 8am–11am1,176 flights84.9%
- 11am–2pm880 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm970 flights59.4%
- 5pm–8pm1,020 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am1,175 flights66.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.6% on time, against 88.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,176 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 56.6% on time, 21 points below April, the best at 77.6%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 513 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.0%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on ATL to MCO runs when it is late
The 1,607 late arrivals split 532 under half an hour, 479 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 596 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early522 flights9.6%
- Within 15 min3,312 flights60.9%
- 15–29 min late532 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late479 flights8.8%
- 1–2 hours late390 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late206 flights3.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 5,441 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
180 of 1,469 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 318 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 Delta on ATL to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 February 2026, 11 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 February 2026 | 11 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 11 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 June 2026 | 10 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 May 2026 | 7 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 May 2026 | 7 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 105,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 48,000 of the 105,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 104,748 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 34,000 minutes out of 105,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.32% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
11.0% 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.
At 404 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.3% on time across 5,531 flights, 8 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 5,534 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on ATL to MCO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 77.6% on time and July 56.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 5,441 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MCO, every carrier
- Delta on MCO to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to MCO74.5%
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to MCO73.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to MCO64.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.