Carrier route record

DLMOB→ATL

Delta Air Lines · Mobile to Atlanta

Flights: 755
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 81%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on MOB to ATL earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 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 755 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MOB to ATL record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 736 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.6%

Every carrier on MOB to ATL, 930 flights

These figures cover 755 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 MOB to ATL

Delta flew 755 of the 930 flights on MOB to ATL, most of the route. Its 86.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.5% to SkyWest at 70.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MOB to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	755	86.5%	80 min	2.38%	A
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	175	70.9%	91 min	1.71%	C

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on MOB to ATL

DL 172106:0093.3% · 277 flights

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 25 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–8am277 flights93.3%
8am–11am33 flights93.5%
11am–2pm187 flights85.8%
2pm–5pm61 flights68.3%
5pm–8pm197 flights82.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 68.3% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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 277 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MOB to ATL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, August worst

April is the best month on the calendar at 91.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.1%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

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 7,911 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
2%

41% 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 7,911 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 7,911 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 3,196 of the 7,911 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.38% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 302 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 755 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 755 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on MOB to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 755 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 86.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 736 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures