Route reliability record
MSN→ATL
Madison to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,025
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 707 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.1 hours. That rests on 1,025 MSN to ATL flights, with a median arrival 22 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSN to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 94.7%, against 90.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 127 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,001 completed flights
Avg delay
128 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
90.3% on time across 1,025 flights
These figures cover 1,025 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 22 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 MSN 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 | 1,025 | 90.3% | 128 min | 1.85% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSN 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 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 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am71 flights93.0%
- 11am–2pm278 flights90.5%
- 2pm–5pm32 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm279 flights87.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.0% of the time, against 80.0% 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
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 85.3% on time, against 98.9% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.2%. 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 68% of the 12,000 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.
- 68%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, 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 8,390 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,389 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.85% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% 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 707 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 84.5% on time across 1,025 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,025 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,025 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 90.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,001 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSN to ATL questions
How often is MSN 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 9.7% of the 1,025 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.1 hours on average.
How reliable is MSN to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
90.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSN to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 80.0%, 13 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 MSN to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 85.3% on time, compared with 98.9% in October. Across the year that is 14 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 MSN — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- MSN to ORD, a related route71.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- MSN to DCA, a related route75.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.3%
- 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
Direction matters. MSN to ATL and ATL to MSN 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.