Route reliability record
SBN→ATL
South Bend to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,028
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 566 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,028 SBN to ATL flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly SBN to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.7%, against 77.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,002 completed flights
Avg delay
118 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.0% on time across 1,027 flights
These figures cover 1,028 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SBN 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 Linesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,027 | 77.0% | 118 min | 2.04% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBN 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.
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 16 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–8am365 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm356 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm10 flights—
- 5pm–8pm297 flights67.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.1% of the time, against 67.5% for the evening window. That is 16 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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.
January is the weak month at 52.5% on time, against 88.9% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.7%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 66% of the 27,000 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 24%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 24% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 27,055 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 18,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 566 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 74.2% on time across 1,028 flights, within 3 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. 1,028 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. 1,028 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 77.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,002 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBN to ATL questions
How often is SBN to ATL delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.0% of the 1,028 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is SBN to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
77.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBN to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.5%, 16 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 January delays on SBN to ATL?
January is the weakest month at 52.5% on time, compared with 88.9% in September. Across the year that is 36 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 SBN — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- SBN to ORD, a related route65.0%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- SBN to CLT, a related route79.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.0%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SBN to ATL and ATL to SBN 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.