Carrier route record

DLATL→CMH

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Columbus

Flights: 2,693
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 85%
Carriers: 4

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

Delta on ATL to CMH lands a B, 5 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 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,693 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to CMH record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,647 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.52%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.5%

Every carrier on ATL to CMH, 3,159 flights

These figures cover 2,693 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 CMH

Delta flew 2,693 of the 3,159 flights on ATL to CMH, most of the route. Its 82.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.3% to Frontier at 57.3%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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 CMH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	6	83.3%	115 min	0.00%	B+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	2,693	82.1%	54 min	1.52%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	326	76.5%	49 min	0.61%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	134	57.3%	63 min	2.24%	D

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on ATL to CMH

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 20 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–8am195 flights94.2%
8am–11am462 flights87.4%
11am–2pm342 flights87.9%
2pm–5pm597 flights82.2%
5pm–8pm437 flights74.7%
8pm–5am660 flights76.6%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.2% of the time, against 74.7% for the evening window. That is 20 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 660 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on ATL to CMH through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 71.2% on time, 16 points below November, the best at 87.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 255 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.4%. 12 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 51% of the 26,000 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
51%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 13,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 25,633 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.52% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here 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 447 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.2% 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 CMH

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 87.5% on time and July 71.2%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,647 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