I am going to Nigeria in May to visit a friend, and I am about to switch my itinerary so I can leave a day earlier (Friday night after work, instead of Saturday). The new flights would be:

DL 2239 leave DCA 9PM arrive ATL 10:49PM
connecting to
DL 54 leave ATL 11:40PM

DL 2239 doesn't seem to have the greatest on-time record...I've been denied SDC on domestic legs of intl trips before, but is there any way I can make a case to take the 8pm flight out of DCA to avoid a misconnect in Atlanta? This itinerary is the only one available for award redemption (and has been, as I have been checking for months now). I just don't want to pay 150 bucks and end up spending the night and following day in Atlanta. It does look like the ATL-LOS flight actually has an even worse on time record tho (I see it left an hour late last night and Flight Stats is saying 30% are late).