AirPlay on Apple TV 2 failing more often than it works

Solution 1:

No - that is not at all common.

Something is certainly causing the instability so you might need to isolate the potential causes one at a time.

• network issues (the most likely culprit but by far not the only one)
• Apple TV needing a restore or perhaps just a reboot.
• iOS device needing the same (restore or reboot).

Before restoring your iOS device, you might try the other steps first or also you could take your device to another network / Apple TV such as a retail store to test and make sure that's not the cause.

Solution 2:

I've had similar airplay flakiness. I can usually fix the issue by toggling AirPlay off and on, but I've also had to reset the Apple TV.