Carrier route record

DLDAL→ATL

Delta Air Lines · Dallas to Atlanta

Flights: 1,851
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 54%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on DAL to ATL lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,851 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DAL to ATL record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,808 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.2%

Every carrier on DAL to ATL, 3,398 flights

These figures cover 1,851 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 DAL to ATL

Delta flew 1,851 of the 3,398 flights on DAL to ATL, most of the route. Its 82.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.1% to Southwest at 75.6%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DAL to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,851	82.1%	90 min	2.11%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,547	75.6%	60 min	1.75%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on DAL 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 17 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–8am465 flights87.8%
8am–11am352 flights88.4%
11am–2pm312 flights83.3%
2pm–5pm362 flights71.2%
5pm–8pm360 flights78.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.4% of the time, against 71.2% for the afternoon window. That is 17 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 465 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on DAL to ATL through the year

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

September is the best month on the calendar at 87.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.9%. 4 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 29,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
14%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,976 reported delay minutes.

34% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 2.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.2% 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.

The 721 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 runs 84.4% on time across 1,850 flights, within 2 points 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 1,851 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 DAL to ATL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.7% on time and May 74.4%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,808 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures