Route reliability record
ORF→ATL
Norfolk to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,946
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 516 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 2,946 ORF to ATL flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORF to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.1%, against 85.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,893 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
85.9% on time across 2,687 flights
These figures cover 2,946 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 2,687 | 85.9% | 83 min | 1.45% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 259 | 76.2% | 82 min | 2.32% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORF 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.
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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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am759 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am557 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm662 flights84.4%
- 2pm–5pm466 flights81.1%
- 5pm–8pm458 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am44 flights68.2%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 68.2% for the overnight window. That is 23 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.
Explore
Filter ORF 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 ORF to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 90.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 68.2%, a wide gap of 22.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am90.2%
- 8–11am90.8%
- 11am–2pm84.4%
- 2–5pm81.1%
- 5–8pm76.2%
- 8pm–5am68.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 70.4% on time, 24 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. July was the busiest month here, with 285 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 35,837 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.9% 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 an hour and a half, 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.7% on time across 2,946 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,946 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. April runs 94.0% on time and July 70.4%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,893 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.9% of the 2,946 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
85.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 90.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.2%, 23 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 70.4% on time, compared with 94.0% in April. Across the year that is 24 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 ORF to ATL85.9%
- Frontier Airlines on ORF to ATL76.2%
- ORF to CLT, a related route81.3%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- ORF to ORD, a related route76.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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.
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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.