Carrier route record
DLPDX→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Portland to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,288
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PDX to ATL 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 1,288 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PDX to ATL record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 132 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,267 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
88.2%
Every carrier on PDX to ATL, 1,575 flights
These figures cover 1,288 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 PDX to ATL
Delta flew 1,288 of the 1,575 flights on PDX to ATL, most of the route. Its 90.8% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 88.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Alaska at 76.8%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,288 | 90.8% | 70 min | 1.01% | A |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 286 | 76.8% | 31 min | 0.35% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PDX to ATL
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 1,288 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.8%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm392 flights87.3%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights88.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am377 flights90.6%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 87.3% on time against 95.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 392 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PDX to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 81.9% on time, 17 points below March, the best at 98.9%. 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 147 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 88.3%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 8,163 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 4,718 of the 8,163 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,163 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.62%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.4% 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.
At 2,172 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.0% on time across 1,288 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,288 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 Delta on PDX to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 98.9% on time and July 81.9%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,267 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to PDX, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to ATL76.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- 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
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.