Route reliability record
ATL→LIT
Atlanta to Little Rock
- Flights
- 2,276
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 453 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,276 ATL to LIT flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to LIT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.6%, against 84.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,229 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.98%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
84.6% on time across 2,276 flights
These figures cover 2,276 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to LIT
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 | 2,276 | 84.6% | 68 min | 1.98% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to LIT
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am687 flights91.6%
- 11am–2pm198 flights87.3%
- 2pm–5pm456 flights81.8%
- 5pm–8pm350 flights77.2%
- 8pm–5am585 flights82.0%
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 91.6% of the time, against 77.2% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 687 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ATL to LIT 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 LIT, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 77.2%, a wide gap of 14.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am91.6%
- 11am–2pm87.3%
- 2–5pm81.8%
- 5–8pm77.2%
- 8pm–5am82.0%
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 15 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.8%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 23,316 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.98% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
At 453 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.5% on time across 2,276 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 2,276 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 LIT 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 91.1% on time and May 76.5%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,229 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to LIT questions
How often is ATL to LIT delayed?
Roughly 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 15.4% of the 2,276 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to LIT compared with the rest of the country?
84.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 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 LIT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 77.2%, 14 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 May delays on ATL to LIT?
May is the weakest month at 76.5% on time, compared with 91.1% in September. Across the year that is 15 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
- LIT to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route72.3%
- DFW to LIT, a related route78.2%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.6%
- 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 LIT and LIT 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.