Route reliability record
LEX→ATL
Lexington to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,044
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 304 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,044 LEX to ATL flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.
Best time to fly LEX to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.5%, against 88.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 110 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,004 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
88.6% on time across 2,044 flights
These figures cover 2,044 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 18 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 LEX 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 | 2,044 | 88.6% | 74 min | 1.81% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on LEX 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 2,044 flights.
- 5am–8am645 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am321 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm295 flights88.8%
- 2pm–5pm319 flights85.6%
- 5pm–8pm287 flights86.0%
- 8pm–5am177 flights83.2%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 83.2% for the overnight window. That is 9 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 645 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
December is the weak month at 78.0% on time, against 96.4% in September. 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 210 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 83.3%. 9 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 46% of the 17,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
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 17,000 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 16,953 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 7,853 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 304 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.0% on time across 2,045 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 2,044 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. September runs 96.4% on time and December 78.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,004 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LEX to ATL questions
How often is LEX 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 11.4% of the 2,044 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is LEX to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
88.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LEX to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 83.2%, 9 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 December delays on LEX to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 78.0% on time, compared with 96.4% in September. Across the year that is 18 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 LEX — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- LEX to ORD, a related route71.8%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- LEX to CLT, a related route83.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.6%
- 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. LEX to ATL and ATL to LEX 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.