Route reliability record
RDU→TPA
Raleigh to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,294
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 587 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,294 RDU to TPA flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 651 at 84.7% on time.
Best time to fly RDU to TPA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.2%, against 82.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,267 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
84.7% on time across 651 flights
These figures cover 1,294 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RDU to TPA
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 651 | 84.7% | 72 min | 1.84% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 383 | 80.6% | 47 min | 1.57% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 260 | 78.5% | 80 min | 3.46% | B− |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 84.7%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RDU to TPA
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Raleigh to Tampa
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RDU → TPARaleigh to Tampa | Delta Air Lines | 83.1% | 84.7% | 1.84% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 1279 06:30 |
| 2. RDU → TPARaleigh to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 79.3% | 80.6% | 1.57% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 31 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am429 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am104 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm172 flights85.3%
- 2pm–5pm109 flights62.4%
- 5pm–8pm380 flights72.6%
- 8pm–5am100 flights79.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 62.4% for the afternoon window. That is 31 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 429 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RDU to TPA 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 RDU to TPA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.8% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 62.4%, a wide gap of 31.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.8%
- 8–11am88.3%
- 11am–2pm85.3%
- 2–5pm62.4%
- 5–8pm72.6%
- 8pm–5am79.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
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.
December is the weak month at 72.6% on time, against 95.5% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.5%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 14,756 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 587 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 runs 81.6% on time across 1,294 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,294 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 TPA 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 95.5% on time and December 72.6%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,267 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDU to TPA questions
How often is RDU to TPA delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.8% of the 1,294 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RDU to TPA?
Delta Air Lines leads at 84.7% on time across 651 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 80.6%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RDU to TPA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 62.4%, 31 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 RDU to TPA?
December is the weakest month at 72.6% on time, compared with 95.5% 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
- TPA to RDU — the return legseparate record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on RDU to TPA84.7%
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to TPA80.6%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to TPA78.5%
- RDU to ATL, a related route86.5%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.0%
- RDU to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record78.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. RDU to TPA and TPA to RDU 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.