Carrier route record
DLMCO→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Orlando to Atlanta
- Flights
- 5,463
- 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 MCO to ATL lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 5,463 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,093 at 71.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
79.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,390 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on MCO to ATL, 8,207 flights
These figures cover 5,463 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 MCO to ATL
Delta flew 5,463 of the 8,207 flights on MCO to ATL, most of the route. Its 79.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.1% to Spirit at 64.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 71.3% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 471 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 5,463 | 79.1% | 88 min | 1.24% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,093 | 71.3% | 59 min | 1.37% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,180 | 67.7% | 74 min | 1.53% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 471 | 64.5% | 68 min | 2.97% | D |
Southwest leads Spirit by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MCO to ATL
- DL 165812:0081.3% · 365 flights
- DL 121311:0082.7% · 365 flights
- DL 115017:3060.7% · 363 flights
- DL 149406:1594.1% · 363 flights
- DL 66413:1081.7% · 363 flights
- DL 146308:0090.3% · 361 flights
- DL 208007:0089.1% · 361 flights
- DL 137216:2065.8% · 359 flights
- DL 103014:1574.6% · 358 flights
- DL 150509:0086.8% · 346 flights
- DL 157615:1570.7% · 333 flights
- DL 220410:0088.3% · 331 flights
- DL 149719:5066.1% · 288 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 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,022 flights92.4%
- 8am–11am1,041 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm1,176 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm1,081 flights70.4%
- 5pm–8pm786 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am357 flights68.2%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.1% on time, against 92.4% 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 69.1% on time, 16 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 86.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.4%. 15 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 99,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 99,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 98,845 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 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
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. 9.2% 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 70.7% on time across 5,465 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 5,463 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 69.1%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 5,390 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 ATL71.3%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to ATL67.7%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to ATL64.5%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.