Carrier route record
DLMCO→SEA
Delta Air Lines · Orlando to Seattle
- Flights
- 719
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MCO to SEA lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 719 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on MCO to SEA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 705 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.5%
Every carrier on MCO to SEA, 1,820 flights
These figures cover 719 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MCO to SEA
Delta flew 719 of the 1,820 flights on MCO to SEA, about 40% of it. Its 76.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 78.1% to Delta at 76.7%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,101 | 78.1% | 55 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 719 | 76.7% | 61 min | 1.39% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MCO to SEA
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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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm354 flights67.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.1% of the time, against 67.0% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MCO to SEA through the year
December is the weak month at 62.5% on time, against 91.7% in September. 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, Friday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.0%, a spread of 5 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MCO to SEA runs when it is late
Delta on MCO to SEA often beats the schedule: 198 of 705 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 164 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 51 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 55 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early198 flights28.1%
- Within 15 min343 flights48.7%
- 15–29 min late58 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late51 flights7.2%
- 1–2 hours late37 flights5.2%
- 2+ hours late18 flights2.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 705 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
41 of 158 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. In the other direction, 47 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SEA.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MCO to SEA
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 February 2026, 8 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 February 2026 | 8 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 February 2026 | 4 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 December 2025 | 3 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 April 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 July 2026 | 3 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 10,065 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.56%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,554 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 719 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 719 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 SEA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 719 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 76.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 705 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to SEA, every carrier
- Delta on SEA to MCO, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on MCO to SEA78.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) 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.