Route reliability record
CMH→ATL
Columbus to Atlanta
- Flights
- 3,129
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 447 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 8 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 3,129 CMH to ATL flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly CMH to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.1%, against 84.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,074 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
87.1% on time across 2,678 flights
These figures cover 3,129 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 CMH 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 | 2,678 | 87.1% | 91 min | 1.38% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 309 | 80.7% | 48 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 142 | 50.4% | 67 min | 3.52% | F− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CMH 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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am697 flights91.1%
- 8am–11am591 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm813 flights84.7%
- 2pm–5pm432 flights85.9%
- 5pm–8pm540 flights75.1%
- 8pm–5am56 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 91.1% for the 5am–8am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 813 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CMH 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 CMH to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 63.6%, a wide gap of 27.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.1%
- 8–11am87.6%
- 11am–2pm84.7%
- 2–5pm85.9%
- 5–8pm75.1%
- 8pm–5am63.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 74.6% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 93.5%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 294 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.9%, 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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 38,148 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.2% 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.
At 447 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.0% on time across 3,130 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 3,129 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 93.5% on time and July 74.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,074 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CMH to ATL questions
How often is CMH 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 15.2% of the 3,129 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CMH to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
84.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CMH to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.6%, 27 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 CMH to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 74.6% on time, compared with 93.5% in September. Across the year that is 19 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 CMH — the return legseparate record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on CMH to ATL87.1%
- Southwest Airlines on CMH to ATL80.7%
- Frontier Airlines on CMH to ATL50.4%
- CMH to ORD, a related route75.4%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- CMH to LGA, a related route79.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record50.4%
- 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. CMH to ATL and ATL to CMH 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.