Carrier route record
DLMCO→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Orlando to Atlanta
- Flights
- 5,531
- 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 MCO to ATL lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 5,531 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,093 at 69.9% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on MCO to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,447 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on MCO to ATL, 8,259 flights
These figures cover 5,531 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 MCO to ATL
Delta flew 5,531 of the 8,259 flights on MCO to ATL, most of the route. Its 78.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.3% to Spirit at 65.1%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 5,531 | 78.3% | 88 min | 1.39% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,093 | 69.9% | 64 min | 1.56% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,266 | 67.2% | 76 min | 2.21% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 369 | 65.1% | 65 min | 3.79% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.8% 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 MCO to ATL
- DL 165812:0579.9% · 365 flights
- DL 121311:0083.1% · 365 flights
- DL 149406:1594.2% · 364 flights
- DL 66413:0579.2% · 363 flights
- DL 115017:3058.0% · 363 flights
- DL 208007:0089.6% · 361 flights
- DL 146308:0088.6% · 361 flights
- DL 103014:0573.0% · 358 flights
- DL 137216:2064.7% · 358 flights
- DL 150509:0088.9% · 356 flights
- DL 220410:0088.3% · 331 flights
- DL 149719:5066.9% · 301 flights
- DL 157615:1572.9% · 271 flights
- DL 154805:3094.7% · 251 flights
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 34 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,045 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am1,051 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm1,176 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm1,078 flights68.4%
- 5pm–8pm786 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am395 flights68.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% on time, against 92.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 1,176 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MCO to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 66.0% on time, 19 points below April, the best at 84.9%. 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 87.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.7%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MCO to ATL runs when it is late
Delta on MCO to ATL often beats the schedule: 2,041 of 5,447 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 1,181 late arrivals split 309 under half an hour, 325 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 547 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early2,041 flights37.5%
- Within 15 min2,225 flights40.8%
- 15–29 min late309 flights5.7%
- 30–59 min late325 flights6.0%
- 1–2 hours late294 flights5.4%
- 2+ hours late253 flights4.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 5,447 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
269 of 1,265 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 185 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MCO to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 20 hours 10 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 20 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 June 2026 | 13 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 May 2026 | 12 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 12 hours 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 September 2025 | 12 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 104,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 104,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 103,776 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.0% 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 70.5% on time across 5,534 flights, 8 points below 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 5,531 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 MCO to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 84.9% on time and July 66.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 5,447 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to MCO, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to ATL69.9%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to ATL67.2%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to ATL65.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.