Route reliability record
ATL→ABQ
Atlanta to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 996
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,269 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 996 ATL to ABQ flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to ABQ: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.3%, against 85.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 979 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
85.3% on time across 996 flights
These figures cover 996 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to ABQ
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 | 996 | 85.3% | 47 min | 1.51% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to ABQ
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.
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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am264 flights92.7%
- 11am–2pm123 flights90.8%
- 2pm–5pm235 flights83.5%
- 5pm–8pm16 flights—
- 8pm–5am358 flights78.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 78.7% for the overnight window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 996 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
February is the weak month at 80.0% on time, against 91.8% in April. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 96 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.9%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 6,821 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 3,812 of the 6,821 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,821 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% 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.
The 1,269 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 89.8% on time across 996 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 996 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 ABQ after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 996 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 85.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 979 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to ABQ questions
How often is ATL to ABQ delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.7% of the 996 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is ATL to ABQ compared with the rest of the country?
85.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to ABQ?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 78.7%, 14 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 February delays on ATL to ABQ?
February is the weakest month at 80.0% on time, compared with 91.8% in April. Across the year that is 12 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
- ABQ to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- PHX to ABQ, a related route79.0%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ATL to ABQ and ABQ to ATL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.