Route reliability record
DAB→ATL
Daytona Beach to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,478
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 366 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 1,478 DAB to ATL flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAB to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.5% of the time and Thursday flights 92.0%, against 88.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 105 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,448 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
88.1% on time across 1,478 flights
These figures cover 1,478 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
Which airline is most reliable on DAB 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 | 1,478 | 88.1% | 81 min | 1.89% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on DAB 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Daytona Beach to Atlanta
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAB → ATLDaytona Beach to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 86.4% | 88.1% | 1.89% | 5am–8am, Thu | DL 3035 11:29 |
| 2. MCO → ATLOrlando to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 78.1% | 79.1% | 1.24% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1494 06:15 |
| 3. MCO → ATLOrlando to Atlanta | Southwest Airlines | 70.3% | 71.3% | 1.37% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. MCO → ATLOrlando to Atlanta | Frontier Airlines | 66.7% | 67.7% | 1.53% | 5am–8am, Wed | F9 1563 05:15 |
| 5. MCO → ATLOrlando to Atlanta | Spirit Airlines | 62.6% | 64.5% | 2.97% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | — |
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 11 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–8am380 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am50 flights91.5%
- 11am–2pm349 flights92.1%
- 2pm–5pm371 flights83.3%
- 5pm–8pm328 flights82.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 82.7% for the evening window. That is 11 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 380 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 79.2% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 96.7%. 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 146 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.2%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 14,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,965 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 14,000 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.
Cancellations sit at 1.89% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 366 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 runs 86.8% on time across 1,478 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,478 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 96.7% on time and July 79.2%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,448 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAB to ATL questions
How often is DAB to ATL delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.9% of the 1,478 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DAB to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
88.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAB to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.7%, 11 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 DAB to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 79.2% on time, compared with 96.7% in September. Across the year that is 18 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 DAB — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- DAB to CLT, a related route84.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DAB to ATL and ATL to DAB 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.