Carrier route record
DLATL→OKC
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Oklahoma City
- Flights
- 1,725
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 94%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ATL to OKC lands a B, 5 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 1,725 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to OKC record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,685 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on ATL to OKC, 1,829 flights
These figures cover 1,725 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 OKC
Delta flew 1,725 of the 1,829 flights on ATL to OKC, most of the route. Its 82.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 100.0% to Frontier at 63.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,725 | 82.5% | 58 min | 2.14% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 103 | 63.0% | 84 min | 2.91% | D |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on ATL to OKC
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 1,725 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm287 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm348 flights79.6%
- 5pm–8pm365 flights82.6%
- 8pm–5am360 flights80.1%
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 87.6% of the time, against 79.6% for the afternoon 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to OKC through the year
July is the worst month at 67.1% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 90.6%. 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 151 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.0%. 11 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 52% of the 17,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 8,986 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,178 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.14% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.4% 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 761 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 88.6% on time across 1,724 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,725 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 OKC
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 90.6% on time and July 67.1%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,685 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to OKC, every carrier
- Delta on OKC to ATL, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to OKC63.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.