Carrier route record
DLHOU→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Houston to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,416
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on HOU to ATL earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 1,416 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's HOU to ATL record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,384 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on HOU to ATL, 2,917 flights
These figures cover 1,416 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 HOU to ATL
Delta flew 1,416 of the 2,917 flights on HOU to ATL, about 49% of it. Its 84.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.9% to Southwest at 75.1%.
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 (this page) | 1,416 | 84.9% | 97 min | 1.77% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,501 | 75.1% | 49 min | 0.53% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on HOU 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 13 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–8am365 flights90.1%
- 8am–11am275 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm267 flights85.3%
- 2pm–5pm154 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm355 flights80.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.1% of the time, against 76.8% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on HOU to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 78.1% on time, 16 points below September, the best at 94.2%. 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 139 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.6%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 20,000 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 11,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,284 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.77% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.3% 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 696 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 81.2% on time across 1,416 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 1,416 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 HOU to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 94.2% on time and July 78.1%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,384 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HOU to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to HOU, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on HOU to ATL75.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.