Route reliability record
TUL→ATL
Tulsa to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,582
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 674 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,582 TUL to ATL flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.
Best time to fly TUL to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.6%, against 88.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,542 completed flights
Avg delay
116 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
88.2% on time across 1,582 flights
These figures cover 1,582 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 18 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
Which airline is most reliable on TUL to ATL
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 | 1,582 | 88.2% | 116 min | 2.34% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on TUL to ATL
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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,582 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am253 flights93.1%
- 11am–2pm273 flights87.8%
- 2pm–5pm379 flights84.0%
- 5pm–8pm312 flights84.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.1% of the time, against 84.0% for the afternoon window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 379 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,582 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 81.9% on time, 11 points below February, the best at 92.5%. 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 146 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.9%. 11 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. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 21,000 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
36% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 21,192 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 674 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.9% on time across 1,582 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,582 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 ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: take the 8am–11am departure, avoid July if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, Delta is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 9 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 1,542 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUL to ATL questions
How often is TUL to ATL delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.8% of the 1,582 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is TUL to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
88.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TUL to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 84.0%, 9 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 TUL to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 81.9% on time, compared with 92.5% in February. Across the year that is 11 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 TUL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- TUL to DFW, a related route77.8%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- TUL to DEN, a related route79.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. TUL to ATL and ATL to TUL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.