Route reliability record
PIT→ATL
Pittsburgh to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,737
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 526 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,737 PIT to ATL flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Best time to fly PIT to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 95.3%, against 89.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 119 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,674 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.90%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
89.6% on time across 2,452 flights
These figures cover 2,737 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 2,452 | 89.6% | 75 min | 2.08% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 285 | 85.5% | 35 min | 0.35% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on PIT 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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am666 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am381 flights93.5%
- 11am–2pm765 flights91.6%
- 2pm–5pm326 flights85.3%
- 5pm–8pm546 flights82.1%
- 8pm–5am53 flights84.9%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 82.1% for the evening 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 765 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PIT 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 PIT to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 93.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 82.1%, a wide gap of 11.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am92.1%
- 8–11am93.5%
- 11am–2pm91.6%
- 2–5pm85.3%
- 5–8pm82.1%
- 8pm–5am84.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
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 95.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.9%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,551 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,006 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.90% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% 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.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 2,737 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 2,737 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. 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. 2,674 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 nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.8% of the 2,737 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PIT to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
89.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 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 93.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.1%, 11 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 PIT to ATL89.6%
- Southwest Airlines on PIT to ATL85.5%
- PIT to ORD, a related route77.1%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- PIT to LGA, a related route79.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.5%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.
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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.