Route reliability record
RIC→ATL
Richmond to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,668
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 481 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 2,668 RIC to ATL flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly RIC to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.7%, against 88.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,609 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.02%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
89.2% on time across 2,599 flights
These figures cover 2,668 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 RIC 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 | 2,599 | 89.2% | 91 min | 2.00% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 64.2% | 112 min | 2.90% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on RIC 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.
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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 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am703 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am668 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm405 flights90.4%
- 2pm–5pm372 flights85.9%
- 5pm–8pm477 flights81.7%
- 8pm–5am43 flights81.4%
Scale runs 75% to 95%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 81.4% for the overnight window. That is 10 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 703 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RIC to ATL 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 RIC to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 81.4%, a wide gap of 10.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am91.0%
- 8–11am91.7%
- 11am–2pm90.4%
- 2–5pm85.9%
- 5–8pm81.7%
- 8pm–5am81.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 75.6% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 94.7%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 235 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 83.8%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 28,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 27,781 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 91.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 481 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 81.6% on time across 2,668 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,668 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 94.7% on time and July 75.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,609 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to ATL questions
How often is RIC to ATL delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.5% of the 2,668 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RIC to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
88.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RIC to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 81.4%, 10 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 RIC to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 75.6% on time, compared with 94.7% in September. Across the year that is 19 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- RIC to CLT, a related route82.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- RIC to LGA, a related route73.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record64.2%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. RIC to ATL and ATL to RIC 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.