Route profile
SFO→ATL
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from San Francisco to Atlanta, 2,139 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 69% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,070 flights. How this is calculated
SFO → ATL arrives on time 81.1% of the time; the return trip, ATL → SFO, arrives on time 72.6% of the time, an 8.5-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
SFO → ATL spends 29.0 minutes on the ground on a 2,139-mile trip: 19.6 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SFO and 9.4 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 98% of 2,692 comparable routes.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 83.6% of the time, against 59.6% 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 SFO → ATL flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
SFO → ATL cancelled 95 of 10,070 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 106. The reason filed most often was the airline, 61.1% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 174 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 95 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.
58 cancellations, 61.1% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
36 cancellations, 37.9% 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, 1.1% 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.
95 coded cancellations were recorded on SFO → ATL; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
35 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 10,070 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at ATL after arriving from SFO.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 35% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 18% | High risk |
| 60 min | 11% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.6% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.3% | 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 0.94% of the time and diverts 0.24% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 9,951 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 35 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,070 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SFO → ATL flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 90.8% of the time, against 75.8% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 15.0 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 93.1% on time from 1,125 flights
- 7 AM: 89.4% on time from 648 flights
- 8 AM: 88.9% on time from 915 flights
- 9 AM: 85.4% on time from 213 flights
- 10 AM: 76.3% on time from 570 flights
- 11 AM: 83.2% on time from 790 flights
- 12 PM: 82.1% on time from 365 flights
- 1 PM: 77.5% on time from 575 flights
- 2 PM: 73.0% on time from 526 flights
- 3 PM: 85.8% on time from 369 flights
- 4 PM to 8 PM: too few flights to score
- 9 PM: 82.6% on time from 953 flights
- 10 PM: 74.4% on time from 1,730 flights
- 11 PM: 72.6% on time from 1,227 flights
Why SFO → ATL runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for SFO → ATL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on SFO → ATL, at 43.9%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 90.8% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 75.8%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is ATL, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from ATL, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 3.3 times the normal rate at ATL against 1.7 times at SFO. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: SFO 1.5% against 0.9%, 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 | SFO | ATL |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.5% | 3.4% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.9% | 1.0% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 73.0% | 66.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 79.8% | 80.2% |
| Departures in bad weather | 36,006 | 105,854 |
United Airlines (1.0% cancelled against 1.9% for the other carriers at SFO) and Delta Air Lines (0.8% cancelled against 1.5% for the other carriers at SFO) cancelled fewer departures from SFO 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 SFO
All departures from SFO| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 13,903 | 1.0%below the others | 1.9% |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,513 | 0.8%below the others | 1.5% |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,057 | 1.8%about level | 1.5% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from SFO and ATL, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from SFO on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: SFO (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 | 7,311 | 83.6% | 0.72% | -8 min | 4.7% |
| United Airlines | 1,819 | 82.1% | 0.60% | -6 min | 4.6% |
| Frontier Airlines | 940 | 59.6% | 3.30% | 8 min | 15.5% |
Delta Air Lines flew 72.6% of the 10,070 flights listed. Frontier Airlines cancelled 3.30% of its flights here against 0.60% for United Airlines.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 24.0 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL570 (6:00 AM) arrived on time 92.4% of the time, 33.8 points more often than F91448 (10:29 PM) at 58.6%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.9 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 86.3%
- Feb: 89.2%
- Mar: 81.8%
- Apr: 78.9%
- May: 77.0%
- Jun: 76.3%
- Jul: 71.4%
- Aug: 80.4%
- Sep: 88.1%
- Oct: 87.4%
- Nov: 83.3%
- Dec: 81.7%
July is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 17.8 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 74.8% from 315 flights
- August 2023: 81.9% from 308 flights
- September 2023: 91.1% from 292 flights
- October 2023: 89.4% from 303 flights
- November 2023: 85.8% from 267 flights
- December 2023: 83.9% from 249 flights
- January 2024: 86.4% from 204 flights
- February 2024: 90.2% from 173 flights
- March 2024: 76.4% from 242 flights
- April 2024: 78.5% from 256 flights
- May 2024: 78.7% from 263 flights
- June 2024: 78.5% from 277 flights
- July 2024: 71.8% from 308 flights
- August 2024: 79.8% from 279 flights
- September 2024: 87.3% from 286 flights
- October 2024: 85.4% from 303 flights
- November 2024: 81.4% from 264 flights
- December 2024: 80.6% from 268 flights
- January 2025: 85.9% from 198 flights
- February 2025: 88.6% from 186 flights
- March 2025: 82.2% from 277 flights
- April 2025: 79.8% from 282 flights
- May 2025: 79.2% from 293 flights
- June 2025: 73.2% from 309 flights
- July 2025: 75.9% from 319 flights
- August 2025: 79.5% from 304 flights
- September 2025: 85.9% from 277 flights
- October 2025: 87.5% from 303 flights
- November 2025: 82.6% from 286 flights
- December 2025: 80.7% from 271 flights
- January 2026: 86.4% from 217 flights
- February 2026: 89.0% from 219 flights
- March 2026: 86.3% from 281 flights
- April 2026: 78.4% from 284 flights
- May 2026: 73.2% from 285 flights
- June 2026: 77.5% from 304 flights
- July 2026: 62.9% from 318 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 80.4% against 81.2% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,070 SFO → 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