Carrier route record
DLMCO→AUS
Delta Air Lines · Orlando to Austin
- Flights
- 547
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- 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 AUS lands a B, 4 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 547 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on MCO to AUS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 535 completed flights
Avg delay
115 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on MCO to AUS, 2,792 flights
These figures cover 547 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 AUS
Delta flew 547 of the 2,792 flights on MCO to AUS, about 20% of it. Its 81.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.0% to Spirit at 72.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 171 | 82.0% | 49 min | 2.34% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 547 | 81.1% | 115 min | 1.46% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,885 | 75.4% | 60 min | 0.74% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 189 | 72.1% | 86 min | 3.17% | C− |
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 547 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm365 flights83.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm170 flights78.3%
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 83.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 78.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MCO to AUS through the year
December is the weak month at 75.0% on time, against 85.7% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.4%. 14 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 12,000 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 2%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 5,430 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,593 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.46% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.73%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 994 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 81.1% on time across 547 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 547 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 Delta on MCO to AUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 547 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 81.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 535 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to AUS, every carrier
- Delta on AUS to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to AUS82.0%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to AUS75.4%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to AUS72.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.