Carrier route record

DLATL→SFO

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to San Francisco

Flights: 2,410
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 72%
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 SFO sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,410 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on ATL to SFO runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 74 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,390 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.62%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.4%

Every carrier on ATL to SFO, 3,354 flights

These figures cover 2,410 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on ATL to SFO

Delta flew 2,410 of the 3,354 flights on ATL to SFO, most of the route. Its 70.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.1% to Frontier at 66.6%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to SFO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	637	78.1%	65 min	0.31%	B+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	2,410	70.2%	55 min	0.62%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	307	66.6%	71 min	1.30%	C

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on ATL to SFO

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 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–8am2 flights—
8am–11am729 flights76.7%
11am–2pm224 flights73.7%
2pm–5pm380 flights67.6%
5pm–8pm561 flights64.3%
8pm–5am514 flights67.6%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.3% on time, against 76.7% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 729 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on ATL to SFO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 54.5%. March is the strongest month at 85.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 31 points. October was the busiest month here, with 230 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.6%. 15 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 43% of the 39,000 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.

Carrier
43%
National Airspace System
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
10%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 17,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 39,385 reported delay minutes.

42% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 16,000 minutes out of 39,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.3% 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 2,139 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.0% on time across 2,407 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,410 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 SFO

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 85.1% on time and May 54.5%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,390 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