Route reliability record
PVD→ATL
Providence to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,106
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 903 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 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 1,106 PVD to ATL flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly PVD to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.3%, against 85.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,075 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
85.5% on time across 1,106 flights
These figures cover 1,106 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
Which airline is most reliable on PVD 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 | 1,106 | 85.5% | 70 min | 2.35% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on PVD 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Providence to Atlanta
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PVD → ATLProvidence to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 83.5% | 85.5% | 2.35% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 1023 06:00 |
| 2. BOS → ATLBoston to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 80.6% | 82.1% | 1.77% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 456 08:05 |
| 3. BOS → ATLBoston to Atlanta | JetBlue Airways | 68.0% | 69.6% | 2.35% | 8am–11am, Tue | B6 697 18:25 |
| 4. BOS → ATLBoston to Atlanta | Frontier Airlines | 63.1% | 65.2% | 3.26% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am48 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm307 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm82 flights88.9%
- 5pm–8pm302 flights81.0%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
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 93.8% of the time, against 81.0% for the evening window. That is 13 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
July is the worst month at 69.7% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 92.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.6%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 11,000 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
34% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 10,900 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 5,423 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.35% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.45%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 903 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 77.9% on time across 1,106 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,106 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 92.7% on time and July 69.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,075 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PVD to ATL questions
How often is PVD to ATL delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.5% of the 1,106 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PVD to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
85.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PVD to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 81.0%, 13 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 July delays on PVD to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 69.7% on time, compared with 92.7% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 PVD — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- PVD to DCA, a related route73.1%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- PVD to BWI, a related route85.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.5%
- 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. PVD to ATL and ATL to PVD 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.