Route reliability record
ATL→XNA
Atlanta to Bentonville
- Flights
- 1,075
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 589 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 2 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,075 ATL to XNA flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to XNA: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.2%, against 79.9% 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
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,051 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.4% on time across 720 flights
These figures cover 1,075 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 XNA
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 Linesthin sample | 355 | 85.1% | 72 min | 0.85% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 720 | 77.4% | 108 min | 2.36% | B |
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 1,075 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am306 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm111 flights74.5%
- 2pm–5pm86 flights80.2%
- 5pm–8pm326 flights75.9%
- 8pm–5am246 flights84.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 74.5% on time against 84.2% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 326 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 87.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.8%. 12 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 75% 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.
- 75%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,938 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, 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 16,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.86% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.7% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 589 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 84.1% on time across 1,076 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,075 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 XNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,075 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 79.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,051 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to XNA questions
How often is ATL to XNA 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 20.1% of the 1,075 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ATL to XNA compared with the rest of the country?
79.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 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 XNA?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 84.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 74.5%, 10 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 March delays on ATL to XNA?
March is the weakest month at 71.4% on time, compared with 87.6% in October. Across the year that is 16 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
- XNA to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to XNA85.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ATL to XNA77.4%
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- DFW to XNA, a related route78.2%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.4%
- 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 XNA and XNA 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.