Carrier route record
DLCMH→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Columbus to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,693
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 85%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on CMH to ATL 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 11 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 2,693 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's CMH to ATL record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,642 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.9%
Every carrier on CMH to ATL, 3,160 flights
These figures cover 2,693 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
Delta against every carrier on CMH to ATL
Delta flew 2,693 of the 3,160 flights on CMH to ATL, most of the route. Its 88.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.2% to Frontier at 51.1%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 2,693 | 88.2% | 92 min | 1.56% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 7 | 85.7% | 206 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 326 | 81.7% | 46 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 134 | 51.1% | 65 min | 2.24% | F |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on CMH to ATL
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 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–8am697 flights91.3%
- 8am–11am516 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm580 flights87.4%
- 2pm–5pm389 flights89.3%
- 5pm–8pm458 flights83.3%
- 8pm–5am53 flights76.5%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.3% of the time, against 76.5% for the overnight window. That is 15 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 697 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on CMH to ATL through the year
December is the weak month at 79.6% on time, against 95.4% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 255 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.0%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 29,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 29,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 28,729 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.2% 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 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 82.1% on time across 2,693 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 2,693 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 Delta on CMH to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.4% on time and December 79.6%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,642 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to CMH, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on CMH to ATL81.7%
- Frontier Airlines on CMH to ATL51.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.