Route reliability record
ATL→GRR
Atlanta to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 1,434
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 640 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 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 1,434 ATL to GRR flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to GRR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.2%, against 83.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,413 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
83.8% on time across 1,383 flights
These figures cover 1,434 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
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 | 1,383 | 83.8% | 64 min | 1.30% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 51 | 70.0% | 85 min | 1.96% | 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.
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 1,434 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am398 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm382 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm210 flights80.2%
- 8pm–5am436 flights80.5%
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 88.4% of the time, against 80.2% for the evening window. That is 8 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 436 flights scheduled in it.
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 74.8% 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 89.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.4%. 10 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 51% of the 15,000 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.
- 51%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 7,854 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,331 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.32% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% 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 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. 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 86.6% on time across 1,433 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,434 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 74.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,413 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 16.7% of the 1,434 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to GRR compared with the rest of the country?
83.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 88.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.2%, 8 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 74.8% 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 route73.4%
- ORD to GRR, a related route70.0%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record70.0%
- 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
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.