Carrier route record

DLATL→DAL

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Dallas

Flights: 1,850
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 54%
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 DAL earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,850 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to DAL record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,797 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.3%

Every carrier on ATL to DAL, 3,398 flights

These figures cover 1,850 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on ATL to DAL

Delta flew 1,850 of the 3,398 flights on ATL to DAL, most of the route. Its 84.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.4% to Southwest at 77.6%.

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 DAL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,850	84.4%	62 min	2.00%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,548	77.6%	58 min	1.68%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on ATL to DAL

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 15 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–8am—
8am–11am564 flights90.9%
11am–2pm70 flights83.8%
2pm–5pm656 flights83.1%
5pm–8pm85 flights75.9%
8pm–5am475 flights80.2%

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

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.9% of the time, against 75.9% for the evening window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 656 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on ATL to DAL through the year

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

July is the worst month at 77.6% on time, 14 points below June, the best at 91.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 174 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.8%. 6 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 52% of the 17,000 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
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 9,075 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,328 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.86%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% 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.

The 721 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 runs 82.1% on time across 1,851 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 1,850 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 DAL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. June runs 91.2% on time and July 77.6%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,797 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