Route reliability record
ATL→LGA
Atlanta to New York
- Flights
- 8,278
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 762 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 8,278 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,419 at 76.7% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.7% on time across 1,419 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 7,948 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.48%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Republic
76.7% on time across 1,419 flights
These figures cover 8,278 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to LGA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.7% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 53.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 858 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 76.9% | 64 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airways | 1,419 | 76.7% | 84 min | 5.00% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 4,937 | 75.4% | 67 min | 2.96% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,051 | 68.7% | 71 min | 2.85% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 858 | 53.5% | 104 min | 4.78% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.0% 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.
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 23 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,028 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am1,549 flights85.6%
- 11am–2pm1,578 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm1,561 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm1,542 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am1,020 flights56.6%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.6% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
June is the worst month at 60.8% on time, 26 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.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.1%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 167,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 69,000 minutes out of 167,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.48%, against 1.80% nationally. That is about 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 stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.5% on time across 8,276 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 8,278 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.48% 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.
Common questions
ATL to LGA questions
How often is ATL to LGA delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.5% of the 8,278 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to LGA?
Republic Airways leads at 76.7% on time across 1,419 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 53.5%, a gap of 23 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 56.6%, 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 June delays on ATL to LGA?
June is the weakest month at 60.8% on time, compared with 86.8% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- Spirit Airlines on-time record76.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.4%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.