Flight number record
DL 434
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to New York
- Route
- ATL → LGA
- Departs
- 18:00
- Flights
- 340
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 434, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 434 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 340 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 434 runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 152 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 327 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.94%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
17.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 340 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 434 flies
DL 434 flies ATL to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:00, used on 179 of 340 flights, with 19:30 (104 flights) and 19:00 (44 flights) next.
- Departs 18:00179 flights52.6%
- Departs 19:30104 flights30.6%
- Departs 19:0044 flights12.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 18:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 434 runs 6 points worse at 62.1%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 434 next to ATL to LGA
Every carrier on ATL to LGA combined arrived on time 72.3% of the time across 8,502 flights, so DL 434 is 10 points behind it. Delta flew 4,937 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 19 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 434thin sample | 340 | 62.1% | 78 min | 2.94% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–LGA | 4,937 | 75.9% | 66 min | 3.48% | B− |
| All carriers on ATL–LGA | 8,502 | 72.3% | 79 min | 4.34% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 434 quarter by quarter
DL 434 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 51.0%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 68 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights76.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights58.0%
- Jan–Mar 202683 flights69.6%
- Apr–Jun 202683 flights60.5%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights51.0%
Scale runs 45% to 80%.
By weekday, DL 434 did best on Wednesday at 75.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 45.8%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 29 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 434 runs when it is late
The 124 late arrivals split 34 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 57 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early64 flights19.6%
- Within 15 min139 flights42.5%
- 15–29 min late34 flights10.4%
- 30–59 min late33 flights10.1%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights8.6%
- 2+ hours late29 flights8.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 327 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 120 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 14 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 18 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 434
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 November 2025, 4 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across November, July, March and June, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 November 2025 | 4 hours 21 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 6 July 2026 | 4 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 3 hours 59 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 July 2026 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 June 2026 | 3 hours 33 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 434 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 9,672 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,230 minutes out of 9,672, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,672 delay minutes reported on DL 434.
Cancellations run at 2.94%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
17.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 762 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
Every one of the 340 flights under DL 434 in the data flew ATL to LGA. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 340 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking DL 434
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 434: 2.94% of its 340 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to LGA, every carrier and departure
- LGA to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 520 on the same route69.5%
- Frontier Airlines 3288 on the same route36.9%
- Delta Air Lines 513 on the same route87.7%
- Delta Air Lines 997 on the same route67.1%
- Delta Air Lines 371 on the same route84.7%
- Delta Air Lines 460 on the same route76.3%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.