Carrier route record

DLATL→XNA

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Bentonville

Flights: 355
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 33%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on ATL to XNA earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 355 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to XNA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.85%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.9%

Every carrier on ATL to XNA, 1,075 flights

These figures cover 355 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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

Delta against every carrier on ATL to XNA

Delta flew 355 of the 1,075 flights on ATL to XNA, about 33% of it. Its 85.1% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.1% to SkyWest at 77.4%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to XNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	355	85.1%	72 min	0.85%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	720	77.4%	108 min	2.36%	B

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am117 flights93.9%
11am–2pm45 flights88.6%
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm158 flights76.9%
8pm–5am26 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.9% of the time, against 76.9% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 158 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on ATL to XNA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025170 flights81.3%
Oct–Dec 2025119 flights89.1%
Jan–Mar 202651 flights89.8%
Apr–Jun 202615 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 85.1% on time across 355 flights.

Quarter by quarter Delta on ATL to XNA held fairly steady: 81.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 89.1% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 89.8% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.0%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 77% of the 3,751 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
77%
National Airspace System
11%
Late-arriving aircraft
7%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, 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 2,871 of the 3,751 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,751 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, 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

5.2% 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 a little over an hour, 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 91.5% on time across 356 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 355 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 Delta on ATL to XNA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 355 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 85.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 349 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures