Route reliability record
ATL→TLH
Atlanta to Tallahassee
- Flights
- 1,949
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 223 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 1,949 ATL to TLH flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to TLH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.7%, against 83.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,915 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
83.4% on time across 1,945 flights
These figures cover 1,949 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
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to TLH
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 | 1,945 | 83.4% | 66 min | 1.39% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 33.3% | 46 min | 25.00% | F− |
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 1,949 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am382 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm299 flights84.7%
- 2pm–5pm409 flights82.0%
- 5pm–8pm495 flights80.9%
- 8pm–5am364 flights82.4%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 87.7% on time for the 8am–11am window against 80.9% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 495 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 64.7% on time, 26 points below June, 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 201 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.3%. 14 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 44% of the 21,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
35% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 21,026 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 9,262 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 223 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.2% on time across 1,949 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,949 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 TLH 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. June runs 90.2% on time and July 64.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,915 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to TLH questions
How often is ATL to TLH delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.7% of the 1,949 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to TLH compared with the rest of the country?
83.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 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 TLH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.9%, 7 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 TLH?
July is the weakest month at 64.7% on time, compared with 90.2% in June. Across the year that is 26 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
- TLH to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- MIA to TLH, a related route83.7%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record33.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ATL to TLH and TLH to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ATL to TLH’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.