Carrier route record

DLMCO→BOS

Delta Air Lines · Orlando to Boston

Flights: 1,257
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 27%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on MCO to BOS lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,257 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 392 at 70.1% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.

On time

77.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,227 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.23%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

71.1%

Every carrier on MCO to BOS, 4,614 flights

These figures cover 1,257 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 BOS

Delta flew 1,257 of the 4,614 flights on MCO to BOS, about 27% of it. Its 77.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. 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: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to BOS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	3	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	151	90.7%	63 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,257	77.0%	72 min	2.23%	B
Spirit Airlines	392	70.1%	54 min	4.59%	C−
JetBlue Airways	2,527	67.4%	80 min	3.72%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	284	66.8%	80 min	3.17%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 4.6% 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 MCO to BOS

DL 243607:0094.7% · 365 flights

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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 33 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am364 flights94.7%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm380 flights76.1%
2pm–5pm167 flights64.4%
5pm–8pm80 flights77.9%
8pm–5am266 flights61.5%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 94.7% 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 380 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MCO to BOS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, February worst

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 82.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.6%, a spread of 15 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on MCO to BOS runs when it is late

Delta on MCO to BOS often beats the schedule: 470 of 1,227 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 282 late arrivals split 75 under half an hour, 82 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 125 an hour or more.

15+ min early470 flights38.3%
Within 15 min475 flights38.7%
15–29 min late75 flights6.1%
30–59 min late82 flights6.7%
1–2 hours late73 flights5.9%
2+ hours late52 flights4.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,227 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

64 of 298 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 48 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on MCO to BOS

The latest arrival of the period was on 27 August 2026, 5 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Delta on MCO to BOS in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
27 August 2026	5 hours 29 minutes	Carrier
15 June 2026	5 hours 21 minutes	Carrier
27 October 2025	5 hours 14 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
27 April 2026	4 hours 27 minutes	Carrier
16 March 2026	4 hours 22 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
2%

45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 to one. The split is drawn from 20,373 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 94.7% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

10.2% 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.

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.

The return leg runs 75.5% on time across 1,257 flights, within 2 points 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. 1,227 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures