Carrier route record
WNTPA→ATL
Southwest Airlines · Tampa to Atlanta
- Flights
- 732
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TPA to ATL 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 732 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 4,413 at 81.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on TPA to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 722 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.9%
Every carrier on TPA to ATL, 6,138 flights
These figures cover 732 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Southwest against every carrier on TPA to ATL
Southwest flew 732 of the 6,138 flights on TPA to ATL, about 12% of it. Its 76.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.7% to Frontier at 73.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| 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 (this page) | 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
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 42 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am18 flights—
- 8am–11am329 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm39 flights94.9%
- 2pm–5pm189 flights71.8%
- 5pm–8pm153 flights53.3%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.3% on time, against 94.9% for the 11am–2pm 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 329 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TPA to ATL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 92.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 71 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 9,913 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 9,913 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 9,913 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% 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 about an hour, 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 75.9% on time across 732 flights, within about a point 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. 732 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on TPA to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 732 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 76.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 722 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to ATL, every carrier
- Southwest on ATL to TPA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on TPA to ATL81.7%
- Spirit Airlines on TPA to ATL80.2%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to ATL73.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.