Carrier route record
DLRDU→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Atlanta
- Flights
- 3,800
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RDU 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 12 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 3,800 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's RDU to ATL record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 119 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,744 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
87.6%
Every carrier on RDU to ATL, 4,618 flights
These figures cover 3,800 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on RDU to ATL
Delta flew 3,800 of the 4,618 flights on RDU to ATL, most of the route. Its 89.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 87.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 90.2% to Frontier at 73.9%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 247 | 90.2% | 68 min | 0.81% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 3,800 | 89.5% | 86 min | 1.37% | A |
| Frontier Airlines | 571 | 73.9% | 95 min | 2.80% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RDU to ATL
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 3,800 flights.
- 5am–8am952 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am715 flights92.2%
- 11am–2pm755 flights91.0%
- 2pm–5pm581 flights87.1%
- 5pm–8pm608 flights84.8%
- 8pm–5am189 flights83.7%
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 92.2% of the time, against 83.7% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 952 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on RDU to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 83.2% on time, 13 points below September, the best at 96.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 346 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.7%. 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 43% of the 34,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 34,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 33,855 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 92.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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.
At 356 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 3,799 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 3,800 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 RDU to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 96.3% on time and July 83.2%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,744 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to RDU, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to ATL90.2%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to ATL73.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.