Route reliability record
DAY→ATL
Dayton to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,408
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,408 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 93.0% of the time and Thursday flights 91.1%, against 89.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,378 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.92%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
89.4% on time across 1,408 flights
These figures cover 1,408 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 1,408 | 89.4% | 96 min | 1.92% | 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.
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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 1,408 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights91.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm424 flights93.0%
- 2pm–5pm330 flights87.7%
- 5pm–8pm289 flights83.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 93.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 83.2%. 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 424 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DAY to ATL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DAY to ATL, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 93.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 83.2%, a real gap of 9.8 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am91.6%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm93.0%
- 2–5pm87.7%
- 5–8pm83.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 75.9% on time, 21 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.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 13,968 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,622 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 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 84.9% on time across 1,408 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 1,408 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 75.9%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,378 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 nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.6% of the 1,408 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DAY to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
89.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 93.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 83.2%, 10 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 75.9% on time, compared with 97.1% in February. Across the year that is 21 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 route72.7%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- DAY to CLT, a related route82.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
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.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.