Carrier route record
DLMCO→BOS
Delta Air Lines · Orlando to Boston
- Flights
- 1,257
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MCO to BOS lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,257 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 519 at 69.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on MCO to BOS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,228 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.5%
Every carrier on MCO to BOS, 4,611 flights
These figures cover 1,257 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 BOS
Delta flew 1,257 of the 4,611 flights on MCO to BOS, about 27% of it. Its 76.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 100.0% to American at 66.8%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 124 | 90.3% | 68 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,257 | 76.0% | 74 min | 2.23% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 519 | 69.3% | 62 min | 3.85% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 2,495 | 67.3% | 78 min | 3.13% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 213 | 66.8% | 71 min | 3.29% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.9% 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 BOS
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 36 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm380 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights64.4%
- 5pm–8pm85 flights78.0%
- 8pm–5am261 flights57.3%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.3% on time, against 93.3% 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 380 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MCO to BOS through the year
February is the weak month at 64.1% on time, against 87.5% in May. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 130 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.9%. 16 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 44% of the 22,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
44% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 21,738 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 93.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
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. 10.9% 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.
The 1,121 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 75.4% on time across 1,257 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,257 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 BOS
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 87.5% on time and February 64.1%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,228 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to BOS, every carrier
- Delta on BOS to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to BOS90.3%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to BOS69.3%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to BOS67.3%
- American Airlines on MCO to BOS66.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.