Route reliability record

ATL→CLE

Atlanta to Cleveland

Flights: 3,407
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 554 mi
Carriers: 2

This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,407 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 2,693 at 83.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,334 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

83.5% on time across 2,693 flights

These figures cover 3,407 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 CLE

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 83.5% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 69.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 714 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,693	83.5%	56 min	1.86%	B
Frontier Airlines	714	69.8%	68 min	2.52%	C

The spread between Delta and Frontier is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 18 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am245 flights90.9%
8am–11am612 flights84.9%
11am–2pm562 flights88.4%
2pm–5pm557 flights80.8%
5pm–8pm527 flights75.8%
8pm–5am904 flights72.8%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.9% of the time, against 72.8% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 904 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 22 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 70.4% on time, against 92.0% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 323 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.1%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why this route gets delayed

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 39,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 38,869 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 16,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 554 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 85.4% on time across 3,407 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.

The sample behind these figures is 3,407 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.

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 92.0% on time and December 70.4%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,334 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

ATL to CLE questions

How often is ATL to CLE delayed?

About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.4% of the 3,407 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on ATL to CLE?

Delta Air Lines leads at 83.5% on time across 2,693 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 69.8%, a gap of 14 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to CLE?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.8%, 18 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 ATL to CLE?

December is the weakest month at 70.4% on time, compared with 92.0% in September. Across the year that is 22 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ATL to CLE and CLE to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures