Route reliability record
ORF→ATL
Norfolk to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,919
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 516 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 2,919 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,866 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
86.2% on time across 2,701 flights
These figures cover 2,919 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 ORF 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 | 2,701 | 86.2% | 85 min | 1.55% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 218 | 77.1% | 91 min | 1.38% | B |
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 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–8am759 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am565 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm641 flights84.9%
- 2pm–5pm457 flights83.8%
- 5pm–8pm447 flights77.6%
- 8pm–5am50 flights66.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 66.0% for the overnight 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 759 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 73.0% on time, 21 points below April, the best at 94.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 268 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.3%. 12 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 47% of the 36,000 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 35,604 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 17,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.54% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.5% 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 are the an hour and a half kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 516 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 79.0% on time across 2,919 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 2,919 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 94.0% on time and July 73.0%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,866 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORF to ATL questions
How often is ORF to ATL delayed?
About one flight in seven arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.4% of the 2,919 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ORF to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
85.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORF to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.0%, 25 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 ORF to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 73.0% on time, compared with 94.0% in April. Across the year that is 21 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 ORF — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.1%
- 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. ORF to ATL and ATL to ORF are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.