Carrier route record

DLATL→CLE

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Cleveland

Flights: 2,693
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 79%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on ATL to CLE lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 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 2,693 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to CLE record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,639 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.6%

Every carrier on ATL to CLE, 3,407 flights

These figures cover 2,693 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

Delta against every carrier on ATL to CLE

Delta flew 2,693 of the 3,407 flights on ATL to CLE, most of the route. Its 83.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.5% to Frontier at 69.8%.

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.

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

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on ATL to CLE

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 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–8am182 flights93.3%
8am–11am383 flights90.6%
11am–2pm525 flights88.8%
2pm–5pm459 flights84.2%
5pm–8pm457 flights76.8%
8pm–5am687 flights76.9%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 76.8% for the evening window. That is 17 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 687 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on ATL to CLE through the year

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

September is the best month on the calendar at 92.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 255 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.8%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 25,000 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.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
7%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 12,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 24,548 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.86% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% 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 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 89.3% on time across 2,693 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,693 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 Delta on ATL to CLE

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.9% on time and March 74.9%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,639 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures