Route reliability record
DSM→ATL
Des Moines to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,250
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 743 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,250 DSM to ATL flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.
Best time to fly DSM to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.8%, against 89.8% 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 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,215 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
89.8% on time across 1,250 flights
These figures cover 1,250 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 19 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 DSM 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 | 1,250 | 89.8% | 91 min | 2.24% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on DSM 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 1,250 flights.
- 5am–8am350 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am34 flights91.2%
- 11am–2pm324 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm224 flights89.2%
- 5pm–8pm318 flights86.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.4% of the time, against 86.2% for the evening window. That is 8 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 350 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
January is the weak month at 83.3% on time, against 95.8% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 121 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
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 11,000 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
39% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 11,239 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 5,274 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.56%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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.
The 743 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.5% on time across 1,249 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 1,250 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. October runs 95.8% on time and January 83.3%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,215 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DSM to ATL questions
How often is DSM 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 10.2% of the 1,250 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DSM to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
89.8% 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 DSM to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 86.2%, 8 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 January delays on DSM to ATL?
January is the weakest month at 83.3% on time, compared with 95.8% in October. Across the year that is 13 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 DSM — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- DSM to ORD, a related route73.1%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- DSM to DEN, a related route83.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.8%
- 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. DSM to ATL and ATL to DSM are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DSM 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.