Route profile
ATL→MCI
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Atlanta to Kansas City, 692 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 68% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,154 flights. How this is calculated
ATL → MCI arrives on time 80.4% of the time; the return trip, MCI → ATL, arrives on time 87.0% of the time, a 6.6-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
ATL → MCI spends 22.4 minutes on the ground on a 692-mile trip: 16.1 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at ATL and 6.3 minutes from touchdown to gate at MCI.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why ATL → MCI flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
ATL → MCI cancelled 102 of 10,154 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 100. The reason filed most often was the airline, 52.9% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 188 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 102 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
54 cancellations, 52.9% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
47 cancellations, 46.1% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
1 cancellation, 1.0% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
102 coded cancellations were recorded on ATL → MCI; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
36 min late
against a median of 4 min early
Percentiles over 10,154 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at MCI after arriving from ATL.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 39% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 19% | High risk |
| 60 min | 12% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.6% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.1% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.00% of the time and diverts 0.21% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,031 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 36 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,154 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
ATL → MCI flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 89.0% of the time, against 70.7% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 18.3 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 7 AM: too few flights to score
- 8 AM: 89.1% on time from 1,535 flights
- 9 AM: 84.9% on time from 350 flights
- 10 AM: 86.3% on time from 723 flights
- 11 AM: 88.6% on time from 518 flights
- 12 PM: 84.0% on time from 450 flights
- 1 PM: 83.7% on time from 735 flights
- 2 PM: 79.7% on time from 909 flights
- 3 PM: 80.2% on time from 601 flights
- 4 PM: 75.7% on time from 741 flights
- 5 PM: 76.9% on time from 304 flights
- 6 PM: 76.5% on time from 402 flights
- 7 PM: 70.9% on time from 854 flights
- 8 PM: 65.1% on time from 457 flights
- 9 PM: 73.4% on time from 413 flights
- 10 PM: 78.2% on time from 1,091 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why ATL → MCI runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for ATL → MCI. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
Bad weather raises cancellations by a similar amount at both ends of ATL to MCI: 3.3 times the normal rate at ATL and 2.5 times at MCI. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: ATL 3.4% against 1.0%, MCI 3.0% against 1.2%. Flights that did leave ATL in bad weather arrived on time 66.5% of the time, against 80.2% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | ATL | MCI |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 3.4% | 3.0% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.0% | 1.2% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 66.5% | 74.7% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 80.2% | 81.9% |
| Departures in bad weather | 105,854 | 16,876 |
Southwest Airlines (2.1% cancelled against 3.1% for the other carriers at ATL) cancelled fewer departures from ATL in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly worse.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at ATL
All departures from ATL| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 8,953 | 2.1%below the others | 3.1% |
| Delta Air Lines | 73,919 | 3.5%about level | 3.6% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from ATL and MCI, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from ATL on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: ATL (airlines), MCI, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 7,832 | 81.6% | 1.10% | -4 min | 5.4% |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,130 | 77.7% | 0.66% | -3 min | 5.5% |
Delta Air Lines flew 78.6% of the 9,962 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 3.9 percentage points more often than Southwest Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL2471 (8:20 AM) arrived on time 90.4% of the time, 14.9 points more often than DL1470 (4:25 PM) at 75.5%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 8.4 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 80.0%
- Feb: 83.6%
- Mar: 78.1%
- Apr: 82.6%
- May: 76.7%
- Jun: 78.2%
- Jul: 69.8%
- Aug: 77.7%
- Sep: 86.2%
- Oct: 86.9%
- Nov: 88.6%
- Dec: 82.1%
July is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 18.8 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 64.4% from 314 flights
- August 2023: 69.0% from 304 flights
- September 2023: 82.6% from 289 flights
- October 2023: 84.5% from 291 flights
- November 2023: 93.7% from 270 flights
- December 2023: 88.0% from 275 flights
- January 2024: 76.0% from 256 flights
- February 2024: 90.9% from 243 flights
- March 2024: 84.0% from 269 flights
- April 2024: 84.2% from 273 flights
- May 2024: 75.4% from 290 flights
- June 2024: 80.5% from 302 flights
- July 2024: 61.7% from 314 flights
- August 2024: 79.8% from 279 flights
- September 2024: 85.4% from 267 flights
- October 2024: 88.5% from 287 flights
- November 2024: 86.9% from 252 flights
- December 2024: 81.2% from 251 flights
- January 2025: 81.0% from 242 flights
- February 2025: 80.5% from 231 flights
- March 2025: 75.0% from 265 flights
- April 2025: 75.8% from 249 flights
- May 2025: 74.0% from 274 flights
- June 2025: 68.7% from 293 flights
- July 2025: 76.8% from 302 flights
- August 2025: 84.4% from 303 flights
- September 2025: 90.3% from 291 flights
- October 2025: 87.6% from 307 flights
- November 2025: 85.1% from 273 flights
- December 2025: 76.7% from 262 flights
- January 2026: 83.3% from 233 flights
- February 2026: 78.7% from 222 flights
- March 2026: 75.0% from 255 flights
- April 2026: 87.3% from 265 flights
- May 2026: 80.8% from 285 flights
- June 2026: 85.4% from 283 flights
- July 2026: 76.6% from 293 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 82.8% against 79.3% in the 12 months before — improving by 3.5 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,154 ATL → MCI flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed