Route reliability record
ATL→GRR
Atlanta to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 1,418
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 640 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,418 ATL to GRR flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to GRR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.7%, against 82.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,398 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.34%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
83.3% on time across 1,385 flights
These figures cover 1,418 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to GRR
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 | 1,385 | 83.3% | 59 min | 1.30% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 65.6% | 104 min | 3.03% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to GRR
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.
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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 1,418 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am380 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm382 flights81.8%
- 5pm–8pm162 flights81.4%
- 8pm–5am486 flights80.0%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.7% of the time, against 80.0% for the overnight window. That is 9 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 486 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ATL to GRR by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ATL to GRR, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 88.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 80.0%, a real gap of 8.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am88.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm81.8%
- 5–8pm81.4%
- 8pm–5am80.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 75.4% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 91.9%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.2%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,454 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,516 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.34% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 640 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.7% on time across 1,417 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 1,418 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 GRR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.9% on time and July 75.4%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,398 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to GRR questions
How often is ATL to GRR delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.1% of the 1,418 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to GRR compared with the rest of the country?
82.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to GRR?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 80.0%, 9 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 July delays on ATL to GRR?
July is the weakest month at 75.4% on time, compared with 91.9% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- GRR to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route72.3%
- ORD to GRR, a related route69.5%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record65.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ATL to GRR and GRR to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.