Route reliability record
ATL→TPA
Atlanta to Tampa
- Flights
- 6,139
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 406 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 6,139 flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 732 at 74.2% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.2% on time across 732 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,044 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.2% on time across 732 flights
These figures cover 6,139 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 74.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 62.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 836 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 732 | 74.2% | 71 min | 0.82% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 4,426 | 72.7% | 58 min | 1.22% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 70.1% | 74 min | 0.69% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 836 | 62.0% | 79 min | 2.03% | D |
The spread between Southwest and Frontier is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 32 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am314 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am1,025 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm1,185 flights81.3%
- 2pm–5pm1,306 flights69.4%
- 5pm–8pm1,085 flights61.6%
- 8pm–5am1,224 flights58.3%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 90.0% 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.
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.
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.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.2%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 110,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 110,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 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 46,000 of the 110,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 78.6% on time across 6,136 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 6,139 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.
Common questions
ATL to TPA questions
How often is ATL to TPA delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.6% of the 6,139 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to TPA?
Southwest Airlines leads at 74.2% on time across 732 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 62.0%, a gap of 12 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 90.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.3%, 32 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.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record72.7%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record70.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.