Carrier route record
DLSEA→MCO
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Orlando
- 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 SEA to MCO lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five 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 SEA to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 705 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.1%
Every carrier on SEA to MCO, 1,818 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 SEA to MCO
Delta flew 719 of the 1,818 flights on SEA to MCO, about 40% of it. Its 79.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 83.6% to Delta at 79.7%.
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 | 1,099 | 83.6% | 41 min | 0.27% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 719 | 79.7% | 58 min | 1.39% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SEA to MCO
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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 flights76.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am354 flights84.7%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 84.7% 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
July is the worst month at 63.9% on time, 25 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 87.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.0%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SEA to MCO runs when it is late
The 143 late arrivals split 68 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early140 flights19.9%
- Within 15 min422 flights59.9%
- 15–29 min late68 flights9.6%
- 30–59 min late40 flights5.7%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights2.3%
- 2+ hours late19 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 705 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 117 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 42 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 68 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 MCO.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on SEA to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 December 2025, 5 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 December 2025 | 5 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 February 2026 | 5 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 7 January 2026 | 4 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 December 2025 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 55% of the 8,277 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,515 of the 8,277 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,277 reported delay minutes.
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
5.0% 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 76.7% on time across 719 flights, 3 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 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 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 79.7% 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
- SEA to MCO, every carrier
- Delta on MCO to SEA, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to MCO83.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.