Carrier route record
DLRDU→TPA
Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Tampa
- Flights
- 649
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 51%
- 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 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 649 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 637 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.7%
Every carrier on RDU to TPA, 1,280 flights
These figures cover 649 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 TPA
Delta flew 649 of the 1,280 flights on RDU to TPA, most of the route. Its 84.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.3% to Frontier at 75.6%. 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) | 649 | 84.3% | 79 min | 1.85% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 382 | 77.9% | 46 min | 1.57% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 249 | 75.6% | 87 min | 2.81% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RDU to TPA
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 15 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–8am364 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm285 flights76.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 76.1% for the evening window. That is 15 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
July is the worst month at 71.9% on time, 22 points below October, the best at 94.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.3%. 10 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 53% of the 7,873 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.
- 53%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 4,135 of the 7,873 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,873 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 90.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.85% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.5% 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 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. 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 runs 86.2% on time across 649 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. 649 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. 649 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 84.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 637 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 TPA77.9%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to TPA75.6%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.