Carrier route record
DLATL→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to New York
- Flights
- 4,936
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ATL to LGA lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 4,936 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,575 at 77.1% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.1% on time across 1,575 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,759 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.4%
Every carrier on ATL to LGA, 8,344 flights
These figures cover 4,936 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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
Delta against every carrier on ATL to LGA
Delta flew 4,936 of the 8,344 flights on ATL to LGA, most of the route. Its 76.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 80.0% to Frontier at 51.8%. One 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 77.1% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 51.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 888 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 10 | 80.0% | 87 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airways | 1,575 | 77.1% | 84 min | 5.14% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 4,936 | 76.7% | 66 min | 2.96% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 935 | 69.6% | 68 min | 3.10% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 888 | 51.8% | 100 min | 5.07% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.1% 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 52021:3070.4% · 364 flights
- DL 99717:0066.2% · 349 flights
- DL 51308:3088.6% · 347 flights
- DL 37110:3085.5% · 346 flights
- DL 43418:0062.2% · 343 flights
- DL 55709:3086.7% · 338 flights
- DL 32307:3091.3% · 336 flights
- DL 52512:3073.2% · 335 flights
- DL 46013:3075.9% · 334 flights
- DL 46819:3067.2% · 333 flights
- DL 46711:3087.0% · 332 flights
- DL 52414:3071.9% · 330 flights
- DL 49020:3061.5% · 306 flights
- DL 43315:3070.1% · 261 flights
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 25 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am585 flights91.6%
- 8am–11am1,032 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm1,016 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm714 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm924 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am665 flights66.4%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.2% on time, against 91.6% 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 1,032 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to LGA through the year
July is the worst month at 64.4% on time, 26 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.0%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 73,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 52%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 13%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 73,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 72,808 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.96%, against 1.81% 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 stage length
What a delay here costs
8.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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 79.9% on time across 4,933 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 4,936 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 2.96% 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. 4,759 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 LGA77.1%
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to LGA69.6%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to LGA51.8%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.