Carrier route record

WNATL→RDU

Southwest Airlines · Atlanta to Raleigh

Flights: 247
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on ATL to RDU lands a B, 6 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 247 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,799 at 83.2% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's ATL to RDU record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 244 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.21%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.4%

Every carrier on ATL to RDU, 4,617 flights

These figures cover 247 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

Southwest against every carrier on ATL to RDU

Southwest flew 247 of the 4,617 flights on ATL to RDU, about 5% of it. Its 83.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 83.6% to Frontier at 60.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 83.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 60.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 571 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to RDU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	247	83.6%	63 min	1.21%	B
Delta Air Lines	3,799	83.2%	56 min	1.24%	B
Frontier Airlines	571	60.2%	75 min	2.80%	D

The spread between Delta and Frontier is 23 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 23 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Southwest 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 247 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am63 flights83.9%
11am–2pm19 flights—
2pm–5pm101 flights81.0%
5pm–8pm64 flights85.7%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.

Across the year

Southwest on ATL to RDU through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights78.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.8%
Jan–Mar 202663 flights90.2%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.6% on time across 247 flights.

Southwest on ATL to RDU did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 90.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.0%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 82 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 97.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%. 24 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 2,521 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
2%

44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,521 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,521 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 970 of the 2,521 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.3% 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.

At 356 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 90.2% on time across 247 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 247 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on ATL to RDU

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 247 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 83.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 244 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures