Carrier route record
DLRSW→ATL
Delta Air Lines · Fort Myers to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,740
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 96%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RSW to ATL earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 2,740 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's RSW to ATL record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 92 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,694 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.7%
Every carrier on RSW to ATL, 2,843 flights
These figures cover 2,740 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 RSW to ATL
Delta flew 2,740 of the 2,843 flights on RSW to ATL, most of the route. Its 86.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.8% to Frontier at 56.0%. 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) | 2,740 | 86.8% | 83 min | 1.50% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 103 | 56.0% | 95 min | 2.91% | D |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RSW to ATL
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 21 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–8am730 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am486 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm581 flights84.8%
- 2pm–5pm422 flights80.1%
- 5pm–8pm432 flights81.8%
- 8pm–5am89 flights73.6%
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 94.2% of the time, against 73.6% for the overnight window. That is 21 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 730 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on RSW to ATL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 94.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 266 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.4%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 30,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 29,621 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 12,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.1% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 515 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.8% on time across 2,741 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,740 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on RSW to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 94.3% on time and March 77.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,694 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RSW to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to RSW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on RSW to ATL56.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.