Route reliability record
AUS→TPA
Austin to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,518
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 928 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 1,518 AUS to TPA flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 365 at 83.9% on time.
Best time to fly AUS to TPA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.9%, against 75.9% 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
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,508 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
83.9% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,518 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 AUS to TPA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 83.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,153 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 83.9% | 63 min | 1.10% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,153 | 73.3% | 58 min | 0.35% | C+ |
Delta leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin to Tampa
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AUS → TPAAustin to Tampa | Delta Air Lines | 83.0% | 83.9% | 1.10% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. AUS → TPAAustin to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 73.0% | 73.3% | 0.35% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 34 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am361 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am383 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm128 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm225 flights64.9%
- 5pm–8pm278 flights60.3%
- 8pm–5am143 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 89.5% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 383 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.8% 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 157 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.1%. 20 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
49% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 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 21,401 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 7,544 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, 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 actually costs
8.0% 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.
The 928 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 79.9% on time across 1,518 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,518 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TPA after this flight
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 89.8% on time and March 67.3%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,508 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to TPA questions
How often is AUS to TPA delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.1% of the 1,518 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to TPA?
Delta Air Lines leads at 83.9% on time across 365 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 73.3%, a gap of 11 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 AUS to TPA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.6%, 34 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 AUS to TPA?
March is the weakest month at 67.3% on time, compared with 89.8% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on AUS to TPA83.9%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to TPA73.3%
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.4%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.3%
- AUS to DFW, a related route73.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.3%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. AUS to TPA and TPA to AUS 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.