Route reliability record
CLE→ATL
Cleveland to Atlanta
- Flights
- 3,398
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 554 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 3,398 CLE to ATL flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 2,680 at 88.3% on time.
Best time to fly CLE to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.3%, against 84.6% 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 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,318 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.03%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
88.3% on time across 2,680 flights
These figures cover 3,398 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 CLE to ATL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 88.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 718 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,680 | 88.3% | 75 min | 1.94% | A |
| Frontier Airlines | 718 | 70.7% | 79 min | 2.37% | C |
The spread between Delta and Frontier is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE 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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cleveland to Atlanta
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. CLE → ATLCleveland to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 86.6% | 88.3% | 1.94% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2838 07:05 |
| 2. CLE → ATLCleveland to Atlanta | Frontier Airlines | 69.0% | 70.7% | 2.37% | 11am–2pm, Wed | F9 2409 05:30 |
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 28 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am956 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am516 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm440 flights89.0%
- 2pm–5pm665 flights83.0%
- 5pm–8pm731 flights78.0%
- 8pm–5am90 flights63.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% on time, against 91.7% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 956 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLE 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 CLE to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 63.3%, a wide gap of 28.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am86.9%
- 8–11am91.7%
- 11am–2pm89.0%
- 2–5pm83.0%
- 5–8pm78.0%
- 8pm–5am63.3%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 77.6% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 94.1%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 322 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.7%, a spread of 13 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 39,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 39,234 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 554 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 79.0% on time across 3,398 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,398 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 94.1% on time and July 77.6%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,318 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to ATL questions
How often is CLE to ATL delayed?
Roughly 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 15.4% of the 3,398 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLE to ATL?
Delta Air Lines leads at 88.3% on time across 2,680 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 70.7%, a gap of 18 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 CLE to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.3%, 28 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 CLE to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 77.6% on time, compared with 94.1% in September. Across the year that is 17 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on CLE to ATL88.3%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to ATL70.7%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.5%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- CLE to EWR, a related route80.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record70.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. CLE to ATL and ATL to CLE 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.