Carrier route record
DLRDU→TPA
Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Tampa
- Flights
- 651
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RDU to TPA earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 651 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's RDU to TPA record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 639 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.2%
Every carrier on RDU to TPA, 1,294 flights
These figures cover 651 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
Delta against every carrier on RDU to TPA
Delta flew 651 of the 1,294 flights on RDU to TPA, most of the route. Its 84.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.7% to Frontier at 78.5%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RDU to TPA
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am364 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm287 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 74.4% for the evening window. That is 18 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on RDU to TPA through the year
January is the weak month at 74.4% on time, against 94.3% in October. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.9%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on RDU to TPA runs when it is late
Delta on RDU to TPA often beats the schedule: 252 of 639 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 98 late arrivals split 31 under half an hour, 25 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 42 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early252 flights39.4%
- Within 15 min289 flights45.2%
- 15–29 min late31 flights4.9%
- 30–59 min late25 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late24 flights3.8%
- 2+ hours late18 flights2.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 639 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 94 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on RDU to TPA
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 February 2026, 5 hours 43 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 February 2026 | 5 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 May 2026 | 3 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 July 2026 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 29 November 2025 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 April 2026 | 3 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 7,029 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,029 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 7,029 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,054 of the 7,029 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.6% 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 a little over 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 86.2% on time across 651 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 651 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on RDU to TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 651 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 639 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to TPA, every carrier
- Delta on TPA to RDU, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to TPA80.6%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to TPA78.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.