Route reliability record
BUF→LGA
Buffalo to New York
- Flights
- 1,835
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 292 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five 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 1,835 BUF to LGA flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly BUF to LGA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.3% of the time and Saturday flights 86.6%, against 78.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,732 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
78.2% on time across 1,835 flights
These figures cover 1,835 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on BUF to LGA
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,835 | 78.2% | 77 min | 5.50% | B− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Buffalo to New York
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BUF → JFKBuffalo to New York | JetBlue Airways | 75.5% | 79.4% | 4.93% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 2001 06:00 |
| 2. BUF → LGABuffalo to New York | Republic Airways | 73.9% | 78.2% | 5.50% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 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–8am601 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am134 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm375 flights80.2%
- 2pm–5pm302 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm423 flights69.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.3% of the time, against 69.4% for the evening window. That is 15 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 601 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 65.5% on time, against 89.3% in September. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 190 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 29,068 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.50%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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.
At 292 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 76.1% on time across 1,835 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,835 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LGA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.50% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,732 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUF to LGA questions
How often is BUF to LGA delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.8% of the 1,835 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is BUF to LGA compared with the rest of the country?
78.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BUF to LGA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.4%, 15 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on BUF to LGA?
December is the weakest month at 65.5% on time, compared with 89.3% in September. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to BUF — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- BUF to ORD, a related route74.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- BUF to MCO, a related route76.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BUF to LGA and LGA to BUF are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed BUF to LGA’s on-time badge on your site
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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.