Route reliability record
ROC→ATL
Rochester to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,043
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 749 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,043 ROC to ATL flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly ROC to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Saturday flights 83.2%, against 79.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,016 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.30%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
79.6% on time across 1,043 flights
These figures cover 1,043 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ROC 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 | 1,043 | 79.6% | 76 min | 2.30% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ROC 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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Rochester to Atlanta
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BUF → ATLBuffalo to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 82.0% | 83.6% | 1.91% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2664 06:00 |
| 2. ROC → ATLRochester to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 77.8% | 79.6% | 2.30% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 1200 06:00 |
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 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 1,043 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm311 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm50 flights81.6%
- 5pm–8pm317 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 75.9% on time against 85.6% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ROC 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 ROC to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.6% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 75.9%, a real gap of 9.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.6%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm75.9%
- 2–5pm81.6%
- 5–8pm76.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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 50.6% on time, against 93.1% in April. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.4%, a spread of 10 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. The split is drawn from 15,704 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 85.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% 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 749 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 77.8% on time across 1,043 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. 1,043 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,043 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 79.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,016 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ROC to ATL questions
How often is ROC to ATL delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.4% of the 1,043 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ROC to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
79.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ROC to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 75.9%, 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 December delays on ROC to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 50.6% on time, compared with 93.1% in April. Across the year that is 42 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 ROC — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ROC to ORD, a related route75.0%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- ROC to BWI, a related route82.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.6%
- 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. ROC to ATL and ATL to ROC 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.