Route reliability record
DAY→ATL
Dayton to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,400
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 432 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,400 DAY to ATL flights, with a median arrival 20 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAY to ATL: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.8% of the time and Thursday flights 93.1%, against 89.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,374 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
89.7% on time across 1,400 flights
These figures cover 1,400 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 20 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 DAY 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 | 1,400 | 89.7% | 101 min | 1.71% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on DAY 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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,400 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm423 flights91.8%
- 2pm–5pm320 flights90.2%
- 5pm–8pm292 flights84.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.8% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 84.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 423 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 80.9% on time, 16 points below February, the best at 97.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 93.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 86.3%. 7 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. Carrier 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%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
38% 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. The split is drawn from 14,227 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 6,130 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.71% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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 432 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.2% on time across 1,400 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 1,400 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. February runs 97.1% on time and July 80.9%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,374 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAY to ATL questions
How often is DAY to ATL delayed?
About one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.3% of the 1,400 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is DAY to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
89.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAY to ATL?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 91.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 84.8%, 7 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 DAY to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 80.9% on time, compared with 97.1% in February. Across the year that is 16 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 DAY — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- DAY to ORD, a related route71.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- DAY to DFW, a related route79.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DAY to ATL and ATL to DAY are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DAY to ATL’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.