Carrier route record
WNATL→LGA
Southwest Airlines · Atlanta to New York
- Flights
- 935
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ATL to LGA sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 935 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
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 899 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.10%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.4%
Every carrier on ATL to LGA, 8,344 flights
These figures cover 935 flights between July 2025 and June 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
Southwest against every carrier on ATL to LGA
Southwest flew 935 of the 8,344 flights on ATL to LGA, about 11% of it. Its 69.6% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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 | 4,936 | 76.7% | 66 min | 2.96% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 40 points, against 25 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am205 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am43 flights83.7%
- 11am–2pm225 flights72.1%
- 2pm–5pm224 flights60.6%
- 5pm–8pm229 flights53.2%
- 8pm–5am9 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.2% on time, against 93.4% 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 229 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ATL to LGA through the year
July is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 27 points below January, the best at 84.8%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.9%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
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 18,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
38% 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 6,981 minutes out of 18,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 18,438 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 93.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.10%, against 1.81% 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
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 8.1% 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 73.6% on time across 935 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 935 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 Southwest on ATL to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.10% 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. 899 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to LGA, every carrier
- Southwest on LGA to ATL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ATL to LGA77.1%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to LGA76.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to LGA51.8%
- Southwest Airlines 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.