Carrier route record

DLAUS→ATL

Delta Air Lines · Austin to Atlanta

Flights: 3,232
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 71%
Carriers: 4

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

Delta on AUS to ATL 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 3,232 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's AUS to ATL record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,178 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.49%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.0%

Every carrier on AUS to ATL, 4,544 flights

These figures cover 3,232 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 AUS to ATL

Delta flew 3,232 of the 4,544 flights on AUS to ATL, most of the route. Its 85.6% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Frontier at 52.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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 AUS to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	3,232	85.6%	73 min	1.49%	A
Southwest Airlines	1,036	78.8%	53 min	0.68%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	275	52.1%	74 min	3.64%	F−

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on AUS to ATL

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 19 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–8am731 flights95.3%
8am–11am625 flights88.5%
11am–2pm707 flights85.9%
2pm–5pm435 flights79.4%
5pm–8pm722 flights76.7%
8pm–5am12 flights—

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

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.3% of the time, against 76.7% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 731 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on AUS to ATL through the year

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

July is the worst month at 76.0% on time, 17 points below February, the best at 93.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 302 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

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 34,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
3%

40% 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 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 33,644 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 12,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 813 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 80.2% on time across 3,233 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,232 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 Delta on AUS to ATL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 93.0% on time and July 76.0%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,178 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