Carrier route record
DLCVG→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Cincinnati to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 90%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on CVG 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 10 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 2,729 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's CVG to ATL record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,692 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.4%
Every carrier on CVG to ATL, 3,017 flights
These figures cover 2,729 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on CVG to ATL
Delta flew 2,729 of the 3,017 flights on CVG to ATL, most of the route. Its 87.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.3% to Frontier at 77.4%. One 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) | 2,729 | 87.3% | 73 min | 1.21% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 288 | 77.4% | 86 min | 1.39% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on CVG 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 14 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–8am666 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am504 flights91.2%
- 11am–2pm335 flights91.5%
- 2pm–5pm621 flights78.7%
- 5pm–8pm487 flights85.1%
- 8pm–5am116 flights82.1%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.9% of the time, against 78.7% for the afternoon window. That is 14 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 666 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on CVG to ATL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 97.1% 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 255 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.2%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
42% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 24,888 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 92.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 373 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 82.9% on time across 2,728 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 2,729 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 CVG to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 97.1% on time and March 78.9%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,692 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to CVG, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on CVG to ATL77.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.