Route reliability record
ATL→DSM
Atlanta to Des Moines
- Flights
- 1,249
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 743 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,249 ATL to DSM flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to DSM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.2%, against 85.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,219 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
85.5% on time across 1,249 flights
These figures cover 1,249 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 DSM
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 | 1,249 | 85.5% | 61 min | 2.24% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to DSM
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,249 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am338 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm229 flights87.7%
- 2pm–5pm333 flights84.4%
- 5pm–8pm6 flights—
- 8pm–5am343 flights82.4%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 87.9% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.4% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 343 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,249 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
February is the weak month at 80.8% on time, against 90.8% in October. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.9%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 11,000 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 5,796 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,776 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually 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.
The 743 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 89.8% on time across 1,250 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 1,249 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DSM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: this route's record is 85.5% on time with 2.24% cancelled, worth an A. The largest single lever is the 8am–11am departure window, and the numbers below the table are where the reasoning behind that lives. 1,219 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to DSM questions
How often is ATL to DSM delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.5% of the 1,249 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to DSM compared with the rest of the country?
85.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to DSM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 82.4%, 6 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 February delays on ATL to DSM?
February is the weakest month at 80.8% on time, compared with 90.8% in October. Across the year that is 10 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DSM to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- ORD to DSM, a related route71.0%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.5%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Your rights on a delayed US flight, and what DOT rules do not require
Direction matters. ATL to DSM and DSM to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ATL to DSM’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.