Carrier route record
DLTPA→CVG
Delta Air Lines · Tampa to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 359
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on TPA to CVG sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on TPA to CVG runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.1%
Every carrier on TPA to CVG, 733 flights
These figures cover 359 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on TPA to CVG
Delta flew 359 of the 733 flights on TPA to CVG, about 49% of it. Its 71.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 78.5% to Delta at 71.5%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 374 | 78.5% | 87 min | 0.27% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample | 359 | 71.5% | 102 min | 1.11% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TPA to CVG
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 359 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm39 flights79.5%
- 5pm–8pm312 flights71.1%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 79.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 71.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 312 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on TPA to CVG through the year
August is the worst month at 41.9% on time, 45 points below April, the best at 86.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.0%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on TPA to CVG runs when it is late
Delta on TPA to CVG often beats the schedule: 109 of 355 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Delta on TPA to CVG is late it tends to be very late: 53 of its 101 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 25 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early109 flights30.7%
- Within 15 min145 flights40.8%
- 15–29 min late26 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late22 flights6.2%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights7.9%
- 2+ hours late25 flights7.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 98 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 11 made it up before arrival. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on TPA to CVG
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 October 2025, 17 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 October 2025 | 17 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 November 2025 | 16 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 April 2026 | 5 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 October 2025 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 September 2025 | 5 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 to one. The split is drawn from 10,309 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,909 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
14.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 773 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 79.9% on time across 359 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 359 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 Delta on TPA to CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 359 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 71.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 355 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to CVG, every carrier
- Delta on CVG to TPA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to CVG78.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.