Carrier route record

DLBOS→LGA

Delta Air Lines · Boston to New York

Flights: 543
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on BOS to LGA earns an A−. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.1 hours. That rests on 543 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BOS to LGA record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 126 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 520 completed flights

Avg delay

126 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.24%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.7%

Every carrier on BOS to LGA, 7,251 flights

These figures cover 543 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on BOS to LGA

Delta flew 543 of the 7,251 flights on BOS to LGA, about 7% of it. Its 90.2% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 90.2% to Republic at 76.6%.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on BOS to LGA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	543	90.2%	126 min	4.24%	A−
Republic Airways	6,708	76.6%	75 min	5.81%	B−

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 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am313 flights93.9%
8am–11am33 flights83.9%
11am–2pm139 flights87.4%
2pm–5pm26 flights—
5pm–8pm27 flights—
8pm–5am5 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.9% of the time, against 83.9% for the morning window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 313 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on BOS to LGA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, January worst

January is the weak month at 85.2% on time, against 97.0% in June. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 83.3%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta 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 6,434 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
2%

39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 6,434 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 6,434 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,508 of the 6,434 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 4.24%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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

5.6% 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 2.1 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 184 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.4% on time across 543 flights, 14 points below 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 14 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 543 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 Delta on BOS to LGA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.24% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.1 hours; 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. 520 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures