Route reliability record
LIT→ATL
Little Rock to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,276
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 453 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 2,276 LIT to ATL flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Best time to fly LIT to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.8%, against 88.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,226 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.07%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
88.5% on time across 2,276 flights
These figures cover 2,276 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 16 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 LIT 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 | 2,276 | 88.5% | 103 min | 2.07% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on LIT 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am728 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am353 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm485 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm268 flights85.1%
- 5pm–8pm442 flights81.7%
- 8pm–5am—
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 93.3% of the time, against 81.7% for the evening window. That is 12 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 728 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LIT 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 LIT to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 81.7%, a wide gap of 11.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.3%
- 8–11am90.1%
- 11am–2pm88.4%
- 2–5pm85.1%
- 5–8pm81.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,276 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
September is the best month on the calendar at 94.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 84.1%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,168 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.07% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 453 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 84.6% on time across 2,276 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 2,276 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: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 81.7% on time against 93.3% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 12 points is the largest single thing you control here. Delta Air Lines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,226 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIT to ATL questions
How often is LIT 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 11.5% of the 2,276 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is LIT to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
88.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 LIT to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 81.7%, 12 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 May delays on LIT to ATL?
May is the weakest month at 83.0% on time, compared with 94.8% in September. Across the year that is 12 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 LIT — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- LIT to DFW, a related route76.4%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- LIT to DEN, a related route80.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.5%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LIT to ATL and ATL to LIT 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.