Route reliability record
ATL→BTR
Atlanta to Baton Rouge
- Flights
- 1,058
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 448 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,058 ATL to BTR flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to BTR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.1%, against 84.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,030 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
84.4% on time across 1,008 flights
These figures cover 1,058 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 BTR
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 | 1,008 | 84.4% | 63 min | 1.69% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 80.0% | 87 min | 10.00% | B− |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,058 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am136 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm225 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm257 flights86.3%
- 5pm–8pm94 flights79.6%
- 8pm–5am346 flights82.5%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.5% of the time, against 79.6% for the evening window. That is 9 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 346 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,058 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
September is the best month on the calendar at 90.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.1%. 6 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 48% of the 10,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,454 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 5,069 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.08% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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 448 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 86.8% on time across 1,058 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. 1,058 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 BTR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,058 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 84.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,030 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to BTR questions
How often is ATL to BTR 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 15.8% of the 1,058 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to BTR compared with the rest of the country?
84.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 ATL to BTR?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 79.6%, 9 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 November delays on ATL to BTR?
November is the weakest month at 80.0% on time, compared with 90.6% in September. Across the year that is 11 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
- BTR to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- DFW to BTR, a related route77.6%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- 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 BTR and BTR 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.