Route reliability record
ALB→ATL
Albany to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,042
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 853 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,042 ALB to ATL flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly ALB to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.3%, against 84.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,013 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.30%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
84.0% on time across 1,042 flights
These figures cover 1,042 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
Which airline is most reliable on ALB to ATL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,042 | 84.0% | 100 min | 2.30% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ALB to ATL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm312 flights79.9%
- 2pm–5pm53 flights86.3%
- 5pm–8pm312 flights80.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 79.9% on time against 90.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ALB to ATL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ALB to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.1% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 79.9%, a wide gap of 10.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.1%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm79.9%
- 2–5pm86.3%
- 5–8pm80.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 68.7% on time, against 93.8% 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 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 80.3%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 16,248 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,053 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.48%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.4% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 853 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.1% on time across 1,042 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,042 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,042 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 84.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,013 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ALB to ATL questions
How often is ALB to ATL delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.0% of the 1,042 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ALB to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
84.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ALB to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 79.9%, 10 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on ALB to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 68.7% on time, compared with 93.8% in September. Across the year that is 25 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to ALB — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ALB to ORD, a related route77.4%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- ALB to BWI, a related route87.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.0%
- 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
Direction matters. ALB to ATL and ATL to ALB are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.