Route profile
IAD→ATL
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Washington to Atlanta, 534 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 39% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 11,323 flights. How this is calculated
IAD → ATL arrives on time 80.0% of the time; the return trip, ATL → IAD, arrives on time 78.8% of the time.
IAD → ATL spends 29.0 minutes on the ground on a 534-mile trip: 18.7 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at IAD and 10.3 minutes from touchdown to gate at ATL.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
The airline matters unusually much on this route, a wider carrier-to-carrier gap than 91% of 2,692 comparable routes.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 82.4% of the time, against 63.9% for Frontier Airlines, flying the exact same route.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 2,692 in the comparison.
Why IAD → ATL flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
IAD → ATL cancelled 175 of 11,323 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 65. The reason filed most often was the airline, 59.4% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 109 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 175 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.
104 cancellations, 59.4% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
65 cancellations, 37.1% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
6 cancellations, 3.4% 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. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
175 coded cancellations were recorded on IAD → ATL; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
50 min late
against a median of 9 min early
Percentiles over 11,323 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at ATL after arriving from IAD.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 32% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 19% | High risk |
| 60 min | 14% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 8.3% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.7% | Some 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 1.55% of the time and diverts 0.27% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 11,117 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 50 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 11,323 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
IAD → ATL flights departing 9 AM–12 PM arrived on time 87.6% of the time, against 70.9% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 16.7 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 85.3% on time from 1,312 flights
- 7 AM: 81.1% on time from 954 flights
- 8 AM: 88.1% on time from 1,042 flights
- 9 AM: 88.0% on time from 262 flights
- 10 AM: 87.4% on time from 808 flights
- 11 AM: 88.4% on time from 167 flights
- 12 PM: 84.2% on time from 1,914 flights
- 1 PM: 87.1% on time from 442 flights
- 2 PM: 73.0% on time from 131 flights
- 3 PM: 77.5% on time from 580 flights
- 4 PM: 69.0% on time from 332 flights
- 5 PM: 69.0% on time from 1,787 flights
- 6 PM: 71.8% on time from 215 flights
- 7 PM: 77.0% on time from 654 flights
- 8 PM to 9 PM: too few flights to score
- 10 PM: 73.4% on time from 544 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why IAD → ATL 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 IAD → ATL. 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 IAD to ATL: 3.1 times the normal rate at IAD and 3.3 times at ATL. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: IAD 3.3% against 1.0%, ATL 3.4% against 1.0%. 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 | IAD | ATL |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 3.3% | 3.4% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.0% | 1.0% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 69.1% | 66.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 82.7% | 80.2% |
| Departures in bad weather | 17,867 | 105,854 |
United Airlines (2.0% cancelled against 4.0% for the other carriers at IAD) cancelled fewer departures from IAD in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly worse. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from IAD to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at IAD
All departures from IAD| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 11,092 | 2.0%below the others | 4.0% |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,065 | 2.7%about level | 3.3% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from IAD and ATL, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from IAD on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: IAD (airlines), ATL, 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 | 6,569 | 82.4% | 1.70% | -12 min | 8.0% |
| United Airlines | 3,478 | 79.6% | 0.86% | -6 min | 8.2% |
| Frontier Airlines | 961 | 63.9% | 3.12% | 0 min | 15.3% |
Delta Air Lines flew 59.7% of the 11,008 flights listed. Frontier Airlines cancelled 3.12% of its flights here against 0.86% for United Airlines.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 18.5 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Other ways to fly Washington to Atlanta
Airport pairs in the same two city markets, as the DOT defines them.
BWI → ATL is the most reliable pairing for this journey at 78.7% on time, against 80.1% for DCA → ATL.
Flying to ATL from the Washington area? Compare IAD, DCA, BWI for ATL, with the same test for what counts as a real difference.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| UA2081 United Airlines | 5:50 PM | 884 | 66.3% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 78.9%
- Feb: 86.0%
- Mar: 81.5%
- Apr: 84.5%
- May: 73.6%
- Jun: 75.4%
- Jul: 68.0%
- Aug: 79.1%
- Sep: 85.6%
- Oct: 87.0%
- Nov: 87.7%
- Dec: 80.1%
July is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 19.7 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 70.7% from 323 flights
- August 2023: 78.4% from 337 flights
- September 2023: 85.7% from 310 flights
- October 2023: 88.9% from 317 flights
- November 2023: 92.4% from 277 flights
- December 2023: 91.1% from 270 flights
- January 2024: 83.9% from 222 flights
- February 2024: 95.6% from 206 flights
- March 2024: 87.6% from 209 flights
- April 2024: 86.4% from 235 flights
- May 2024: 79.5% from 279 flights
- June 2024: 82.7% from 312 flights
- July 2024: 69.8% from 294 flights
- August 2024: 81.8% from 306 flights
- September 2024: 82.9% from 305 flights
- October 2024: 90.9% from 318 flights
- November 2024: 92.7% from 290 flights
- December 2024: 78.9% from 308 flights
- January 2025: 71.3% from 272 flights
- February 2025: 79.1% from 258 flights
- March 2025: 79.9% from 315 flights
- April 2025: 79.6% from 318 flights
- May 2025: 66.8% from 349 flights
- June 2025: 67.1% from 351 flights
- July 2025: 68.9% from 353 flights
- August 2025: 77.3% from 343 flights
- September 2025: 88.2% from 315 flights
- October 2025: 81.6% from 334 flights
- November 2025: 78.9% from 322 flights
- December 2025: 71.7% from 321 flights
- January 2026: 82.2% from 281 flights
- February 2026: 85.2% from 262 flights
- March 2026: 78.9% from 305 flights
- April 2026: 87.7% from 354 flights
- May 2026: 75.6% from 405 flights
- June 2026: 76.9% from 381 flights
- July 2026: 63.0% from 366 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 78.6% against 78.0% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 11,323 IAD → ATL 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