Carrier route record
DLATL→HOU
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Houston
- Flights
- 1,416
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- 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 HOU lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,416 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on ATL to HOU from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,389 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.5%
Every carrier on ATL to HOU, 2,915 flights
These figures cover 1,416 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 HOU
Delta flew 1,416 of the 2,915 flights on ATL to HOU, about 49% of it. Its 81.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.2% to Southwest at 79.9%.
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) | 1,416 | 81.2% | 56 min | 1.77% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,499 | 79.9% | 58 min | 0.67% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on ATL to HOU
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–11am366 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm302 flights84.9%
- 2pm–5pm381 flights77.7%
- 5pm–8pm20 flights—
- 8pm–5am347 flights74.1%
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 88.7% of the time, against 74.1% for the overnight 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 381 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to HOU through the year
July is the worst month at 72.5% on time, 16 points below September, the best at 88.4%. 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 139 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.3%. 5 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 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%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 8,279 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,728 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.77% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.8% 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 696 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 84.9% on time across 1,416 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 1,416 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 HOU
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 88.4% on time and July 72.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,389 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to HOU, every carrier
- Delta on HOU to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to HOU79.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) 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.