Route reliability record
ATL→LGA
Atlanta to New York
- Flights
- 8,502
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 762 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 8,502 ATL to LGA flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 4,937 at 75.9% on time.
Best time to fly ATL to LGA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 78.5%, against 72.3% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.9% on time across 4,937 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 8,076 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.34%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
75.9% on time across 4,937 flights
These figures cover 8,502 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to LGA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 75.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 46.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 950 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 4,937 | 75.9% | 66 min | 3.48% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,905 | 75.5% | 88 min | 5.88% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 29 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 700 | 72.0% | 65 min | 2.86% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 66.7% | 23 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 950 | 46.2% | 107 min | 6.84% | F− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 6.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to LGA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
- Delta 52021:3069.5% · 364 flights
- Frontier 328820:5736.9% · 363 flights
- Delta 51308:3087.7% · 351 flights
- Delta 99717:0067.1% · 349 flights
- Delta 37110:3084.7% · 346 flights
- Delta 43418:0062.1% · 340 flights
- Delta 46013:3076.3% · 340 flights
- Delta 32307:3090.8% · 337 flights
- Delta 55709:3083.9% · 336 flights
- Delta 46819:3065.3% · 336 flights
- Delta 52512:3073.9% · 335 flights
- Delta 46711:3084.1% · 332 flights
- Delta 52414:3070.3% · 324 flights
- Frontier 345415:3051.1% · 305 flights
- Delta 49020:3062.1% · 297 flights
- Delta 43315:3067.7% · 267 flights
- Delta 40406:0091.7% · 250 flights
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Atlanta to New York
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ATL → JFKAtlanta to New York | Delta Air Lines | 77.2% | 78.4% | 1.55% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 2420 07:43 |
| 2. ATL → EWRAtlanta to Newark | United Airlines | 76.7% | 79.0% | 2.92% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 299 06:07 |
| 3. ATL → HPNAtlanta to White Plains | Delta Air Lines | 75.4% | 77.6% | 2.79% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 1616 19:59 |
| 4. ATL → LGAAtlanta to New York | Delta Air Lines | 73.3% | 75.9% | 3.48% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 404 06:00 |
| 5. ATL → LGAAtlanta to New York | Republic Airways | 71.1% | 75.5% | 5.88% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 points, against 30 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,036 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am1,529 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm1,604 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm1,634 flights66.1%
- 5pm–8pm1,666 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am1,033 flights56.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.0% on time, against 91.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 1,666 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ATL to LGA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ATL to LGA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.0%, a wide gap of 35.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.2%
- 8–11am85.2%
- 11am–2pm77.1%
- 2–5pm66.1%
- 5–8pm59.1%
- 8pm–5am56.0%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 58.5% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 86.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 799 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.3%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 176,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 76,000 minutes out of 176,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 175,942 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.34%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.7% 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.5% on time across 8,500 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 8,502 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LGA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.34% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 8,076 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to LGA questions
How often is ATL to LGA delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.7% of the 8,502 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to LGA?
Delta Air Lines leads at 75.9% on time across 4,937 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 46.2%, a gap of 30 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to LGA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.0%, 35 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on ATL to LGA?
July is the weakest month at 58.5% on time, compared with 86.8% in September. Across the year that is 28 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to LGA75.9%
- Republic Airways on ATL to LGA75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to LGA72.0%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to LGA46.2%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record75.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ATL to LGA and LGA to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.