Carrier route record
DLATL→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to New York
- Flights
- 4,937
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ATL to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 4,937 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,905 at 75.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on ATL to LGA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,727 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.48%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on ATL to LGA, 8,502 flights
These figures cover 4,937 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on ATL to LGA
Delta flew 4,937 of the 8,502 flights on ATL to LGA, most of the route. Its 75.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 75.9% to Frontier at 46.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 75.5% 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 (this page) | 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
Delta flight numbers on ATL to LGA
- DL 52021:3069.5% · 364 flights
- DL 51308:3087.7% · 351 flights
- DL 99717:0067.1% · 349 flights
- DL 37110:3084.7% · 346 flights
- DL 43418:0062.1% · 340 flights
- DL 46013:3076.3% · 340 flights
- DL 32307:3090.8% · 337 flights
- DL 55709:3083.9% · 336 flights
- DL 46819:3065.3% · 336 flights
- DL 52512:3073.9% · 335 flights
- DL 46711:3084.1% · 332 flights
- DL 52414:3070.3% · 324 flights
- DL 49020:3062.1% · 297 flights
- DL 43315:3067.7% · 267 flights
- DL 40406:0091.7% · 250 flights
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against 29 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am586 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am1,034 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm1,023 flights77.6%
- 2pm–5pm708 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm924 flights63.8%
- 8pm–5am662 flights66.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,034 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to LGA through the year
July is the worst month at 63.6% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 90.7%. 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 437 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.4%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on ATL to LGA runs when it is late
The 1,138 late arrivals split 386 under half an hour, 332 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 420 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early996 flights21.1%
- Within 15 min2,593 flights54.9%
- 15–29 min late386 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late332 flights7.0%
- 1–2 hours late271 flights5.7%
- 2+ hours late149 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 4,727 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
219 of 1,144 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 213 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on ATL to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 14 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 14 hours 50 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 March 2026 | 9 hours 28 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 22 June 2026 | 8 hours 21 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 August 2026 | 7 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 August 2026 | 7 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 75,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% 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 38,000 minutes out of 75,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 74,603 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.48%, against 1.89% 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 costs
8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 79.1% on time across 4,935 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 4,937 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 Delta on ATL to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.48% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 4,727 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to ATL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ATL to LGA75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to LGA72.0%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to LGA46.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.