Route reliability record

ATL→TPA

Atlanta to Tampa

Flights: 6,141
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 406 mi
Carriers: 4

This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 6,141 flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 732 at 75.9% on time.

Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.9% on time across 732 flights.

On time

73.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,053 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.22%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Southwest

75.9% on time across 732 flights

These figures cover 6,141 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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

Which airline is most reliable on ATL to TPA

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 75.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 870 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	732	75.9%	68 min	0.82%	B+
Delta Air Lines	4,413	74.6%	55 min	1.18%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	126	69.6%	82 min	0.79%	C+
Frontier Airlines	870	64.9%	77 min	1.84%	D

Southwest leads Frontier by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 29 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am327 flights90.7%
8am–11am1,035 flights82.5%
11am–2pm1,174 flights81.7%
2pm–5pm1,284 flights72.0%
5pm–8pm1,134 flights64.7%
8pm–5am1,187 flights61.8%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.8% on time, against 90.7% for the 5am–8am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 1,284 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 28 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 54.5% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 82.2%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 568 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%. 17 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 42% of the 99,000 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
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

36% 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 99,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 98,586 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 42,000 of the 99,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

8.9% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 406 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.9% on time across 6,138 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.

The sample behind these figures is 6,141 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 this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 82.2% on time and July 54.5%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 6,053 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

ATL to TPA questions

How often is ATL to TPA delayed?

About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.7% of the 6,141 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on ATL to TPA?

Southwest Airlines leads at 75.9% on time across 732 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 64.9%, a gap of 11 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to TPA?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.8%, 29 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 TPA?

July is the weakest month at 54.5% on time, compared with 82.2% in September. Across the year that is 28 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ATL to TPA and TPA to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures