Carrier route record
DLCHS→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Charleston to New York
- Flights
- 403
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on CHS to LGA draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 2.4 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 403 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on CHS to LGA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 128 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 384 completed flights
Avg delay
144 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on CHS to LGA, 1,440 flights
These figures cover 403 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.3% 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
Delta against every carrier on CHS to LGA
Delta flew 403 of the 1,440 flights on CHS to LGA, about 28% of it. Its 64.8% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 78.7% to Delta at 64.8%.
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 | 1,037 | 78.7% | 82 min | 5.59% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 403 | 64.8% | 144 min | 4.22% | D− |
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 19 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–8am—
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm52 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm227 flights60.4%
- 5pm–8pm120 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 79.6% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 60.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 227 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on CHS to LGA through the year
July is the worst month at 45.7% on time, 36 points below September, the best at 81.8%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 51.0%. 20 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. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 19,000 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.
- 51%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 9,930 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,409 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.22%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 19.3% 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.
The 641 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 68.2% on time across 403 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. 403 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 CHS to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.22% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.4 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 384 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.