Route reliability record
CAE→ATL
Columbia to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,871
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 192 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 77.6%. 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 96.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.0%, against 87.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 100 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,844 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
87.6% on time across 1,867 flights
These figures cover 1,871 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
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 | 87.6% | 89 min | 1.39% | 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.
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 20 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–8am657 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am179 flights96.0%
- 11am–2pm401 flights88.0%
- 2pm–5pm227 flights82.6%
- 5pm–8pm377 flights75.7%
- 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 96.0% of the time, against 75.7% for the evening window. That is 20 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 657 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,871 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
September is the best month on the calendar at 94.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 210 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.3%. 10 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. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 20,000 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 20,406 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 9,130 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.6% on time across 1,870 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 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: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 75.7% on time against 96.0% for the 8am–11am slot, and that 20 points is the largest single thing you control here. Delta Air Lines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,844 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 eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.4% of the 1,871 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
87.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 CAE to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 96.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.7%, 20 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 May delays on CAE to ATL?
May is the weakest month at 82.4% on time, compared with 94.2% in September. Across the year that is 12 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 route72.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- CAE to DFW, a related route81.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.