Carrier route record
DLATL→CVG
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 2,728
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 91%
- 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 CVG 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 an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,728 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to CVG record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,691 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.0%
Every carrier on ATL to CVG, 3,013 flights
These figures cover 2,728 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 CVG
Delta flew 2,728 of the 3,013 flights on ATL to CVG, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.9% to Frontier at 72.9%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 2,728 | 82.9% | 55 min | 1.25% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 285 | 72.9% | 87 min | 1.75% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on ATL to CVG
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 12 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–8am255 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am418 flights87.1%
- 11am–2pm433 flights84.4%
- 2pm–5pm565 flights82.1%
- 5pm–8pm431 flights78.6%
- 8pm–5am626 flights79.6%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.0% of the time, against 78.6% 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 626 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to CVG through the year
July is the worst month at 69.3% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 95.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 255 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.8%. 10 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 56% 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 14,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 25,425 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.25% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.3% 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 last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 373 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 87.3% on time across 2,729 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,728 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 CVG
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.0% on time and July 69.3%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,691 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to CVG, every carrier
- Delta on CVG to ATL, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to CVG72.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- 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
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.