Route reliability record
ATL→PVD
Atlanta to Providence
- Flights
- 1,106
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 903 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 1,106 ATL to PVD flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to PVD: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.3%, against 77.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,080 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
77.9% on time across 1,106 flights
These figures cover 1,106 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 PVD
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 | 1,106 | 77.9% | 57 min | 2.26% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Atlanta to Providence
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ATL → PVDAtlanta to Providence | Delta Air Lines | 76.1% | 77.9% | 2.26% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 2. ATL → BOSAtlanta to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 74.9% | 76.2% | 1.72% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 987 07:00 |
| 3. ATL → BOSAtlanta to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 69.3% | 71.2% | 2.71% | 5am–8am, Sat | B6 896 12:48 |
| 4. ATL → BOSAtlanta to Boston | Frontier Airlines | 64.7% | 66.4% | 2.50% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 13 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–11am307 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm113 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm300 flights73.4%
- 5pm–8pm21 flights—
- 8pm–5am365 flights72.7%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 85.7% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 72.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 60.7% on time, 30 points below September, the best at 90.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.7%. 9 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 55% of the 14,000 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.
- 55%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 7,475 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,715 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.5% 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 903 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 85.5% on time across 1,106 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,106 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 PVD 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 90.2% on time and July 60.7%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,080 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to PVD questions
How often is ATL to PVD delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.1% of the 1,106 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to PVD compared with the rest of the country?
77.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point 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 PVD?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.7%, 13 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 PVD?
July is the weakest month at 60.7% on time, compared with 90.2% in September. Across the year that is 30 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
- PVD to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- DCA to PVD, a related route72.8%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.9%
- 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 PVD and PVD 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.