Carrier route record
DLRDU→MCO
Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,005
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RDU to MCO lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,005 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 844 at 78.2% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's RDU to MCO record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 978 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on RDU to MCO, 2,702 flights
These figures cover 1,005 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 RDU to MCO
Delta flew 1,005 of the 2,702 flights on RDU to MCO, about 37% of it. Its 81.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.9% to Frontier at 73.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,005 | 81.9% | 80 min | 2.39% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 129 | 81.2% | 38 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 844 | 78.2% | 62 min | 1.54% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 724 | 73.0% | 93 min | 1.80% | C |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 78.2%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RDU to MCO
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 21 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am361 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm362 flights81.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm278 flights70.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.0% of the time, against 70.4% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on RDU to MCO through the year
August is the worst month at 63.0% on time, 31 points below November, the best at 94.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 5,265 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,133 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 91.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 534 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 79.3% on time across 1,005 flights, within 3 points 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. 1,005 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 RDU to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,005 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 978 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to MCO, every carrier
- Delta on MCO to RDU, the return leg
- Republic Airways on RDU to MCO81.2%
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to MCO78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to MCO73.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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.