Route reliability record

TPA→ATL

Tampa to Atlanta

Flights: 6,138
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 406 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 6,138 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 4,413 at 81.7% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.7% on time across 4,413 flights.

On time

79.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,053 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.25%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

81.7% on time across 4,413 flights

These figures cover 6,138 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 TPA to ATL

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.7% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 73.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 867 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	4,413	81.7%	75 min	1.22%	B
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	126	80.2%	101 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	732	76.9%	59 min	1.37%	B
Frontier Airlines	867	73.5%	61 min	1.50%	C

Delta leads Frontier by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 26 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1,139 flights90.1%
8am–11am1,173 flights88.1%
11am–2pm1,136 flights82.3%
2pm–5pm1,075 flights74.6%
5pm–8pm1,166 flights70.4%
8pm–5am449 flights64.2%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.2% on time, against 90.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,173 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 23 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 66.2% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 89.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 568 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.1%. 14 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 86,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
26%
Extreme weather
3%

45% 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 86,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 85,902 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 90.1% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.25% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

7.4% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 406 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.3% on time across 6,141 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 6,138 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 this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.1% on time and July 66.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 6,053 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

TPA to ATL questions

How often is TPA to ATL delayed?

About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.1% of the 6,138 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on TPA to ATL?

Delta Air Lines leads at 81.7% on time across 4,413 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 73.5%, a gap of 8 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on TPA to ATL?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.2%, 26 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 July delays on TPA to ATL?

July is the weakest month at 66.2% on time, compared with 89.1% in September. Across the year that is 23 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. TPA to ATL and ATL to TPA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures