Route reliability record
CAE→ATL
Columbia to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,871
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 192 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 9 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 1,871 CAE to ATL flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly CAE to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 94.1%, against 86.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,841 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.50%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
86.0% on time across 1,867 flights
These figures cover 1,871 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 CAE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,867 | 86.0% | 94 min | 1.50% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on CAE 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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am628 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am188 flights95.1%
- 11am–2pm372 flights86.2%
- 2pm–5pm255 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm398 flights73.9%
- 8pm–5am30 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 95.1% of the time, against 73.9% for the evening window. That is 21 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 628 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CAE 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 CAE to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 95.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 73.9%, a wide gap of 21.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am93.5%
- 8–11am95.1%
- 11am–2pm86.2%
- 2–5pm80.0%
- 5–8pm73.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 72.2% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 94.2%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 218 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.8%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 24,083 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% 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 192 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 runs 83.1% on time across 1,871 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,871 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 94.2% on time and July 72.2%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,841 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CAE to ATL questions
How often is CAE to ATL delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.0% of the 1,871 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CAE to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
86.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CAE to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 95.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.9%, 21 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 CAE to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 72.2% on time, compared with 94.2% in September. Across the year that is 22 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 CAE — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- CAE to DCA, a related route72.6%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- CAE to DFW, a related route82.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.0%
- 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. CAE to ATL and ATL to CAE 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.