Route reliability record
ATL→BTR
Atlanta to Baton Rouge
- Flights
- 1,101
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 448 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,101 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 88.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.3%, against 82.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,072 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
82.7% on time across 1,054 flights
These figures cover 1,101 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 1,054 | 82.7% | 60 min | 1.61% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 78.6% | 87 min | 10.64% | B− |
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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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am177 flights88.8%
- 11am–2pm188 flights82.3%
- 2pm–5pm272 flights83.7%
- 5pm–8pm116 flights77.2%
- 8pm–5am348 flights80.5%
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 88.8% of the time, against 77.2% for the evening window. That is 12 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 348 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ATL to BTR 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 ATL to BTR, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 88.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 77.2%, a wide gap of 11.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am88.8%
- 11am–2pm82.3%
- 2–5pm83.7%
- 5–8pm77.2%
- 8pm–5am80.5%
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 16 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.
July is the worst month at 74.8% on time, 16 points below September, the best at 90.6%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.7%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
- 9%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 11,524 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,290 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.64%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.7% on time across 1,101 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,101 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BTR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 90.6% on time and July 74.8%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,072 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 17.4% of the 1,101 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to BTR compared with the rest of the country?
82.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 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 88.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 77.2%, 12 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 July delays on ATL to BTR?
July is the weakest month at 74.8% on time, compared with 90.6% in September. Across the year that is 16 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 route72.3%
- DFW to BTR, a related route79.7%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record82.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.6%
- 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. 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.