Route reliability record
ATL→SYR
Atlanta to Syracuse
- Flights
- 1,091
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 794 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,091 ATL to SYR flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to SYR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.5%, against 81.2% 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
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,063 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
81.6% on time across 1,046 flights
These figures cover 1,091 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 SYR
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 | 1,046 | 81.6% | 52 min | 2.39% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 72.1% | 49 min | 4.44% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to SYR
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 1,091 flights.
- 5am–8am5 flights—
- 8am–11am353 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm57 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm311 flights81.6%
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights76.4%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.7% of the time, against 76.4% for the overnight window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
December is the weak month at 68.2% on time, against 87.5% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.6%. 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 48% of the 10,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 4,962 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,286 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 85.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.47% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 794 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 84.4% on time across 1,091 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,091 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 SYR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,091 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 81.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,063 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to SYR questions
How often is ATL to SYR delayed?
About 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 18.8% of the 1,091 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is ATL to SYR compared with the rest of the country?
81.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 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 SYR?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 76.4%, 9 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 December delays on ATL to SYR?
December is the weakest month at 68.2% on time, compared with 87.5% in April. Across the year that is 19 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
- SYR to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- ORD to SYR, a related route74.7%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.1%
- 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 SYR and SYR 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.