Carrier route record
DLPHX→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Phoenix to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,303
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PHX 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 9 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 2,303 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 632 at 77.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PHX to ATL record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 94 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,276 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on PHX to ATL, 3,764 flights
These figures cover 2,303 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 PHX to ATL
Delta flew 2,303 of the 3,764 flights on PHX to ATL, most of the route. Its 87.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.0% to Frontier at 72.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 2,303 | 87.0% | 97 min | 0.91% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 632 | 77.6% | 40 min | 0.16% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 614 | 75.5% | 66 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 215 | 72.2% | 74 min | 0.93% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 77.6%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PHX to ATL
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am698 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am248 flights85.8%
- 11am–2pm464 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm447 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm17 flights—
- 8pm–5am429 flights85.1%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.0% of the time, against 82.8% for the afternoon window. That is 11 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 698 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PHX to ATL through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 79.8%. August is the strongest month at 91.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 12 points. March was the busiest month here, with 211 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.9%. 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 52% of the 29,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
35% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 28,708 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.1% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,587 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 76.0% on time across 2,301 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,303 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 PHX to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 91.8% on time and March 79.8%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,276 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to PHX, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to ATL77.6%
- American Airlines on PHX to ATL75.5%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to ATL72.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.