Route reliability record
OMA→ATL
Omaha to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,784
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 821 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 close to two hours. That rests on 1,784 OMA to ATL flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Best time to fly OMA to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.8%, against 86.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 92 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,751 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
87.7% on time across 1,726 flights
These figures cover 1,784 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on OMA 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 | 1,726 | 87.7% | 103 min | 1.51% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 58 | 60.3% | 130 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on OMA 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 1,784 flights.
- 5am–8am687 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am138 flights90.5%
- 11am–2pm339 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm331 flights86.0%
- 5pm–8pm289 flights81.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.5% of the time, against 81.4% for the evening 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 687 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
July is the worst month at 80.0% on time, 16 points below February, the best at 95.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 160 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.4%. 8 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 59% of the 25,000 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.
- 59%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, 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 15,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 24,513 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.46% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.39%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.0% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 821 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 80.0% on time across 1,784 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,784 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. February runs 95.8% on time and July 80.0%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,751 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OMA to ATL questions
How often is OMA to ATL delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.2% of the 1,784 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is OMA to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
86.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OMA to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 81.4%, 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 July delays on OMA to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 80.0% on time, compared with 95.8% in February. Across the year that is 16 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 OMA — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- OMA to DEN, a related route76.1%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- OMA to ORD, a related route74.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record60.3%
- 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. OMA to ATL and ATL to OMA 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.