Carrier route record
WNATL→LGA
Southwest Airlines · Atlanta to New York
- Flights
- 700
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 700 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 4,937 at 75.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.9% on time across 4,937 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 674 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.86%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on ATL to LGA, 8,502 flights
These figures cover 700 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on ATL to LGA
Southwest flew 700 of the 8,502 flights on ATL to LGA, about 8% of it. Its 72.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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. 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 (this page) | 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.
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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 34 points, against 30 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am158 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am27 flights—
- 11am–2pm168 flights72.4%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights65.2%
- 5pm–8pm171 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am9 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% 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 171 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ATL to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025112 flights81.2%
- Oct–Dec 2025352 flights65.7%
- Jan–Mar 2026236 flights76.8%
Scale runs 55% to 85%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.0% on time across 700 flights.
Southwest on ATL to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 81.2% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 65.7%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 233 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.6%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on ATL to LGA runs when it is late
The 189 late arrivals split 63 under half an hour, 58 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 68 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early75 flights11.1%
- Within 15 min410 flights60.8%
- 15–29 min late63 flights9.3%
- 30–59 min late58 flights8.6%
- 1–2 hours late42 flights6.2%
- 2+ hours late26 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 674 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
34 of 191 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 32 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on ATL to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 November 2025, 5 hours 37 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as security. Three of the five worst days fell in November 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 November 2025 | 5 hours 37 minutes | Security |
| 13 October 2025 | 5 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 October 2025 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 November 2025 | 4 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 November 2025 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 4%Security
- 3%Extreme weather
39% 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 4,752 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 12,217 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 2.86%, against 1.89% 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
10.1% 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 75.1% on time across 700 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 700 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 2.86% 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. 674 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
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to LGA75.9%
- Republic Airways on ATL to LGA75.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to LGA46.2%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.