Route reliability record
PIT→ATL
Pittsburgh to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,777
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 526 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a 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 about an hour. That rests on 2,777 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 127 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,706 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
90.7% on time across 2,475 flights
These figures cover 2,777 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 PIT 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 | 2,475 | 90.7% | 71 min | 2.34% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 302 | 86.7% | 38 min | 0.33% | A+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 2,777 flights.
- 5am–8am669 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am378 flights93.2%
- 11am–2pm802 flights91.9%
- 2pm–5pm339 flights88.1%
- 5pm–8pm507 flights85.1%
- 8pm–5am82 flights83.8%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 83.8% for the overnight window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 802 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
December is the weak month at 82.1% on time, against 95.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 251 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 86.0%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 17,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
36% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 17,387 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 6,976 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.43%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% 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.
The 526 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 84.5% on time across 2,777 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 2,777 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. September runs 95.7% on time and December 82.1%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,706 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIT to ATL questions
How often is PIT to ATL delayed?
About one flight in ten arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.7% of the 2,777 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PIT to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
90.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 83.8%, 9 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 December delays on PIT to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 82.1% on time, compared with 95.7% in September. Across the year that is 14 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 PIT — the return legseparate record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record86.7%
- 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. PIT to ATL and ATL to PIT 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.