Carrier route record
DLTPA→RDU
Delta Air Lines · Tampa to Raleigh
- Flights
- 651
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on TPA to RDU earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 651 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's TPA to RDU record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 637 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on TPA to RDU, 1,294 flights
These figures cover 651 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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
Delta against every carrier on TPA to RDU
Delta flew 651 of the 1,294 flights on TPA to RDU, most of the route. Its 86.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.2% to Southwest at 76.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TPA to RDU
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am287 flights78.2%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 78.2% for the overnight window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on TPA to RDU through the year
July is the worst month at 75.0% on time, 21 points below October, the best at 96.2%. 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 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on TPA to RDU runs when it is late
Delta on TPA to RDU often beats the schedule: 328 of 637 completed flights, 51%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 88 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 25 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early328 flights51.5%
- Within 15 min221 flights34.7%
- 15–29 min late24 flights3.8%
- 30–59 min late25 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late17 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 637 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 96 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. Only 10 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on TPA to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 February 2026, 14 hours 8 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 15 February 2026 | 14 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 3 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 April 2026 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 June 2026 | 2 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 December 2025 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 6,950 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,950 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 6,950 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 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.1% 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 84.7% on time across 651 flights, within 2 points 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. 651 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 RDU
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 651 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 86.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 637 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to RDU, every carrier
- Delta on RDU to TPA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to RDU78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to RDU76.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.