Route reliability record

CLE→ATL

Cleveland to Atlanta

Flights: 3,407
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 554 mi
Carriers: 2

This route earns a 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 3,407 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 2,693 at 89.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,329 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.05%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

89.3% on time across 2,693 flights

These figures cover 3,407 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 89.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 714 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on CLE to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,693	89.3%	74 min	1.93%	A
Frontier Airlines	714	70.6%	78 min	2.52%	C

The spread between Delta and Frontier is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am948 flights87.6%
8am–11am500 flights92.1%
11am–2pm497 flights87.3%
2pm–5pm596 flights85.8%
5pm–8pm756 flights79.9%
8pm–5am110 flights64.5%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 92.1% 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 948 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 16 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, January worst

January is the weak month at 77.7% on time, against 94.1% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 322 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.5%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 37,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
10%

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 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 36,828 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 13,000 of the 37,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

5.3% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.6% on time across 3,407 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 3,407 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.

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 January 77.7%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 3,329 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

CLE to ATL questions

How often is CLE to ATL delayed?

About one flight in seven arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.6% of the 3,407 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 89.3% on time across 2,693 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 70.6%, a gap of 19 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 92.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.5%, 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 January delays on CLE to ATL?

January is the weakest month at 77.7% on time, compared with 94.1% in September. Across the year that is 16 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

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.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures