Route reliability record
BHM→ATL
Birmingham to Atlanta
- Flights
- 3,371
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 134 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 3,371 BHM to ATL flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly BHM to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.9%, against 87.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,308 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.72%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
87.2% on time across 3,371 flights
These figures cover 3,371 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 BHM 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 | 3,371 | 87.2% | 83 min | 1.72% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on BHM 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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am957 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am653 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm530 flights90.8%
- 2pm–5pm612 flights81.3%
- 5pm–8pm619 flights79.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.8% of the time, against 79.2% for the evening window. That is 13 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 957 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BHM 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 BHM to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 79.2%, a wide gap of 12.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am90.8%
- 8–11am91.8%
- 11am–2pm90.8%
- 2–5pm81.3%
- 5–8pm79.2%
- 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 18 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.
July is the worst month at 77.5% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 95.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 317 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.5%, a spread of 9 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 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 35,178 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.72% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 134 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.1% on time across 3,371 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,371 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 95.0% on time and July 77.5%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,308 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BHM to ATL questions
How often is BHM to ATL delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.8% of the 3,371 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is BHM to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
87.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BHM to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 79.2%, 13 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 July delays on BHM to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 77.5% on time, compared with 95.0% in September. Across the year that is 18 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 BHM — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- BHM to DFW, a related route80.1%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- BHM to CLT, a related route83.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.2%
- 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. BHM to ATL and ATL to BHM 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.