Carrier route record

DLSEA→MCO

Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Orlando

Flights: 719
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 40%
Carriers: 2

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

Delta on SEA to MCO lands a B, 2 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 719 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on SEA to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 705 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.53%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.0%

Every carrier on SEA to MCO, 1,820 flights

These figures cover 719 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on SEA to MCO

Delta flew 719 of the 1,820 flights on SEA to MCO, about 40% of it. Its 79.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 81.9% to Delta at 79.6%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SEA to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines	1,101	81.9%	43 min	0.36%	B+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	719	79.6%	59 min	1.53%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SEA to MCO

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 719 flights.

5am–8am16 flights—
8am–11am349 flights76.3%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am354 flights84.1%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The overnight block holds up unusually well at 84.1% on time across 354 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 354 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SEA to MCO through the year

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

July is the worst month at 61.7% on time, 27 points below May, the best at 88.5%. 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 62 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%. 9 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 51% of the 8,485 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.

Carrier
51%
National Airspace System
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 4,369 of the 8,485 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,485 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.42%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 75.2% on time across 719 flights, 4 points below 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 4 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 SEA to MCO

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 79.6% 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.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures