Route reliability record
TPA→ATL
Tampa to Atlanta
- Flights
- 6,136
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 406 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.4%. 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 6,136 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 4,426 at 80.3% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.3% on time across 4,426 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,050 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.25%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Delta
80.3% on time across 4,426 flights
These figures cover 6,136 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 TPA to ATL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 80.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 832 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 4,426 | 80.3% | 77 min | 1.22% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 146 | 80.1% | 98 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 732 | 76.1% | 61 min | 1.37% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 832 | 71.8% | 67 min | 1.56% | C |
Delta leads Frontier by 9 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 28 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,115 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am1,197 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm1,167 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm985 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm1,215 flights66.3%
- 8pm–5am457 flights61.8%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.8% on time, against 89.4% 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.
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.
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.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.5%. 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 47% of the 95,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
47% 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 95,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 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 89.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.25% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.2%. 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 71.4% on time across 6,139 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 6,136 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.
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 21.4% of the 6,136 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% 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 80.3% on time across 4,426 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 71.8%, a gap of 9 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 89.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.8%, 28 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.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.3%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record80.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.