Route reliability record
SYR→ATL
Syracuse to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,124
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 794 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,124 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 85.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.8%, against 83.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,099 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.96%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
83.5% on time across 1,096 flights
These figures cover 1,124 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 1,096 | 83.5% | 88 min | 1.92% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 28 | 74.1% | 54 min | 3.57% | C− |
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.
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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 1,124 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm334 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm116 flights77.4%
- 5pm–8pm300 flights85.3%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 8 points.
Explore
Filter SYR 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 SYR to ATL, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 85.3% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 77.4%, a real gap of 7.9 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am85.1%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm81.7%
- 2–5pm77.4%
- 5–8pm85.3%
- 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 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.3%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,544 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,990 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.8% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.0% on time across 1,124 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,124 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. May runs 91.2% on time and December 60.7%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,099 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 16.7% of the 1,124 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
83.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 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 85.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 77.4%, 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 route73.6%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- SYR to CLT, a related route78.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.1%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.