Route reliability record
TPA→RDU
Tampa to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,294
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 587 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,294 TPA to RDU flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 651 at 86.2% on time.
Best time to fly TPA to RDU: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.2%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,269 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.85%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
86.2% on time across 651 flights
These figures cover 1,294 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 TPA to RDU
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 76.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 383 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 651 | 86.2% | 79 min | 2.00% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 260 | 78.2% | 85 min | 3.08% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 383 | 76.1% | 57 min | 0.78% | B+ |
Delta leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on TPA to RDU
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tampa to Raleigh
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. TPA → RDUTampa to Raleigh | Delta Air Lines | 84.5% | 86.2% | 2.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 1279 09:30 |
| 2. TPA → RDUTampa to Raleigh | Southwest Airlines | 75.5% | 76.1% | 0.78% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 29 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am45 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am527 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm85 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm234 flights76.3%
- 5pm–8pm104 flights60.6%
- 8pm–5am299 flights78.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 89.6% for the 8am–11am 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 527 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TPA to RDU 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 TPA to RDU, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 89.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.6%, a wide gap of 29.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am84.4%
- 8–11am89.6%
- 11am–2pm82.1%
- 2–5pm76.3%
- 5–8pm60.6%
- 8pm–5am78.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 74.1% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 93.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.3%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 to one. The split is drawn from 16,793 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.85% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 587 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 runs 82.2% on time across 1,294 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,294 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 RDU 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. September runs 93.3% on time and July 74.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,269 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to RDU questions
How often is TPA to RDU delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.4% of the 1,294 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to RDU?
Delta Air Lines leads at 86.2% on time across 651 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.1%, a gap of 10 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 RDU?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.6%, 29 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 RDU?
July is the weakest month at 74.1% on time, compared with 93.3% in September. Across the year that is 19 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
- RDU to TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on TPA to RDU86.2%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to RDU78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to RDU76.1%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.6%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.0%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.1%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. TPA to RDU and RDU to TPA 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.