Route reliability record
ATL→MSN
Atlanta to Madison
- Flights
- 1,025
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 707 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,025 ATL to MSN flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to MSN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 94.7%, against 84.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,007 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
84.5% on time across 1,025 flights
These figures cover 1,025 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 MSN
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 | 1,025 | 84.5% | 58 min | 1.76% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to MSN
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 1,025 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am307 flights86.8%
- 11am–2pm57 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm296 flights83.7%
- 5pm–8pm7 flights—
- 8pm–5am358 flights82.7%
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 86.8% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.7% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 358 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 74.1% on time, 17 points below October, the best at 90.9%. 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 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.8%. 16 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 56% of the 9,096 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
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 6%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 5,117 of the 9,096 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,096 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 707 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 90.3% on time across 1,025 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,025 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,025 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 84.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,007 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to MSN questions
How often is ATL to MSN 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 15.5% of the 1,025 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to MSN compared with the rest of the country?
84.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 MSN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 82.7%, 4 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 MSN?
July is the weakest month at 74.1% on time, compared with 90.9% in October. 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
- MSN to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- ORD to MSN, a related route71.4%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.5%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
Direction matters. ATL to MSN and MSN 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.