Carrier route record
WNATL→TPA
Southwest Airlines · Atlanta to Tampa
- Flights
- 732
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ATL to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 732 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 4,413 at 74.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on ATL to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 725 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on ATL to TPA, 6,141 flights
These figures cover 732 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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
Southwest against every carrier on ATL to TPA
Southwest flew 732 of the 6,141 flights on ATL to TPA, about 12% of it. Its 75.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 75.9% to Frontier at 64.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 74.6% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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 |
Delta leads Frontier by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am19 flights—
- 8am–11am123 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm204 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm154 flights79.1%
- 5pm–8pm207 flights59.2%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.2% on time, against 88.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 207 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ATL to TPA through the year
August is the worst month at 63.0% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 87.3%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 71 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 12,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
60% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 11,846 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
8.6% 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 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 76.9% on time across 732 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 732 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on ATL to TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 732 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 75.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 725 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to TPA, every carrier
- Southwest on TPA to ATL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to TPA74.6%
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to TPA69.6%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to TPA64.9%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.