Carrier route record
DLPDX→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Portland to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,257
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 81%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,257 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PDX to ATL record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 129 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,236 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
88.4%
Every carrier on PDX to ATL, 1,544 flights
These figures cover 1,257 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
Delta against every carrier on PDX to ATL
Delta flew 1,257 of the 1,544 flights on PDX to ATL, most of the route. Its 90.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 88.4%. 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 80.2%. 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) | 1,257 | 90.2% | 60 min | 0.95% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 286 | 80.2% | 36 min | 0.70% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PDX to ATL
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 1,257 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights94.9%
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm392 flights87.3%
- 2pm–5pm152 flights88.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am346 flights89.1%
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 94.9% 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 80.7% on time, 18 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. August was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 85.1%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on PDX to ATL runs when it is late
Delta on PDX to ATL often beats the schedule: 491 of 1,236 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 121 late arrivals split 57 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early491 flights39.7%
- Within 15 min624 flights50.5%
- 15–29 min late57 flights4.6%
- 30–59 min late40 flights3.2%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights1.1%
- 2+ hours late11 flights0.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,236 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 158 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 67 still arrived on time. 30 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on PDX to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 July 2026, 13 hours 42 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 July 2026 | 13 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 May 2026 | 7 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 May 2026 | 6 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 April 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 June 2026 | 3 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 7,267 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,267 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 7,267 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,716 of the 7,267 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.72%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 77.5% on time across 1,257 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,257 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 80.7%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,236 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 ATL80.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.