Route reliability record
BDL→ATL
Hartford to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,310
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 859 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,310 BDL to ATL flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly BDL to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.8%, against 84.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,257 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
84.5% on time across 2,219 flights
These figures cover 2,310 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to ATL
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 Lines | 2,219 | 84.5% | 64 min | 1.98% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 91 | 76.7% | 86 min | 1.10% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on BDL to ATL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am712 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am253 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm423 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm381 flights81.6%
- 5pm–8pm541 flights80.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 80.8% on time against 92.5% for 8am–11am. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 712 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BDL to ATL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BDL to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 92.5% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 80.8%, a wide gap of 11.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am87.2%
- 8–11am92.5%
- 11am–2pm80.8%
- 2–5pm81.6%
- 5–8pm80.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
December is the weak month at 69.7% on time, against 92.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 212 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.1%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 23,345 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,400 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 859 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.6% on time across 2,310 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 2,310 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 ATL 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 92.3% on time and December 69.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,257 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to ATL questions
How often is BDL to ATL delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.8% of the 2,310 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BDL to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
84.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BDL to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 80.8%, 12 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 December delays on BDL to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 69.7% on time, compared with 92.3% 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
- ATL to BDL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- BDL to ORD, a related route75.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- BDL to MCO, a related route73.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BDL to ATL and ATL to BDL 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.