Carrier route record

DLXNA→ATL

Delta Air Lines · Bentonville to Atlanta

Flights: 356
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 33%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on XNA to ATL 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 356 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's XNA to ATL record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 139 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 353 completed flights

Avg delay

97 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.1%

Every carrier on XNA to ATL, 1,076 flights

These figures cover 356 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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

Delta against every carrier on XNA to ATL

Delta flew 356 of the 1,076 flights on XNA to ATL, about 33% of it. Its 91.5% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 91.5% to SkyWest at 80.4%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on XNA to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	356	91.5%	97 min	0.84%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	720	80.4%	95 min	2.08%	B

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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am137 flights94.9%
8am–11am85 flights91.6%
11am–2pm36 flights91.7%
2pm–5pm46 flights91.3%
5pm–8pm52 flights82.7%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.9% of the time, against 82.7% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 137 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on XNA to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 2025170 flights93.5%
Oct–Dec 2025120 flights93.3%
Jan–Mar 202651 flights86.0%
Apr–Jun 202615 flights—

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 91.5% on time across 356 flights.

Quarter by quarter Delta on XNA to ATL held fairly steady: 93.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 93.3% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 86.0% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 96.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 84.2%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,906 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,906 reported delay minutes.

36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,048 minutes out of 2,906, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 589 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 85.1% on time across 355 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 356 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 XNA to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 356 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 91.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 353 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures