Route reliability record
SYR→ATL
Syracuse to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,091
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 794 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,091 SYR to ATL flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly SYR to ATL: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.8%, against 84.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,061 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
85.6% on time across 1,046 flights
These figures cover 1,091 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
Which airline is most reliable on SYR 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 | 1,046 | 85.6% | 90 min | 2.39% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 55.8% | 58 min | 4.44% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on SYR 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 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 1,091 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm349 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm61 flights80.3%
- 5pm–8pm307 flights88.3%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 88.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 8 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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 60.7% on time, against 91.2% in May. 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 102 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.2%. 12 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 62% of the 14,000 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.
- 62%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, 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 8,930 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,297 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% 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 794 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 81.2% on time across 1,091 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,091 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. 1,091 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 84.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,061 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SYR to ATL questions
How often is SYR to ATL delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.6% of the 1,091 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SYR to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
84.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SYR to ATL?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 88.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 80.3%, 8 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 SYR to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 60.7% on time, compared with 91.2% in May. Across the year that is 31 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 SYR — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- SYR to ORD, a related route74.0%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- SYR to CLT, a related route80.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record55.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SYR to ATL and ATL to SYR 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.