Carrier route record
DLATL→MCO
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Orlando
- Flights
- 5,465
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 5,465 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,095 at 75.4% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.4% on time across 1,095 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,380 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.7%
Every carrier on ATL to MCO, 8,211 flights
These figures cover 5,465 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on ATL to MCO
Delta flew 5,465 of the 8,211 flights on ATL to MCO, most of the route. Its 70.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 75.4% to Frontier at 65.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 75.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 65.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,181 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,095 | 75.4% | 61 min | 1.10% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 470 | 71.5% | 89 min | 3.62% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 5,465 | 70.7% | 64 min | 1.17% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,181 | 65.6% | 112 min | 1.61% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.6% 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 103011:4578.9% · 365 flights
- DL 165809:3583.1% · 365 flights
- DL 121308:1585.9% · 365 flights
- DL 174215:5555.3% · 364 flights
- DL 149717:1557.1% · 364 flights
- DL 115014:5064.3% · 363 flights
- DL 66410:2583.5% · 363 flights
- DL 137213:4570.5% · 360 flights
- DL 203518:1556.7% · 344 flights
- DL 173321:3563.2% · 343 flights
- DL 288119:2061.4% · 341 flights
- DL 157612:4076.5% · 333 flights
- DL 116222:2068.0% · 322 flights
- DL 220407:1589.1% · 301 flights
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 31 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am302 flights89.2%
- 8am–11am1,176 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm881 flights76.1%
- 2pm–5pm970 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm1,007 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am1,129 flights66.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.6% on time, against 89.2% 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 55.4% on time, 22 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 76.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.7%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 100,000 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 47,000 of the 100,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 100,117 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.17% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% 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.
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 79.1% on time across 5,463 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 5,465 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 55.4%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 5,380 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 MCO75.4%
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to MCO71.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to MCO65.6%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.