Route reliability record
CLE→LGA
Cleveland to New York
- Flights
- 1,826
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 419 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 1,826 CLE to LGA flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to LGA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Saturday flights 85.7%, against 75.9% 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
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,717 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
77.0% on time across 1,669 flights
These figures cover 1,826 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 CLE 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 | 1,669 | 77.0% | 75 min | 5.75% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 157 | 64.7% | 80 min | 3.82% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE to LGA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cleveland 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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLE → EWRCleveland to Newark | United Airlines | 78.1% | 79.8% | 2.10% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 601 07:00 |
| 2. CLE → EWRCleveland to Newark | Republic Airways | 77.0% | 81.3% | 5.29% | 5pm–8pm, Thu | — |
| 3. CLE → LGACleveland to New York | Republic Airways | 72.6% | 77.0% | 5.75% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 4677 06:49 |
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 31 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–8am422 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am94 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm527 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm429 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm307 flights60.1%
- 8pm–5am47 flights59.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 90.2% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 527 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
July is the worst month at 65.2% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 88.3%. 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 212 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 46% of the 31,000 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.
- 46%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
35% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 31,200 reported delay minutes.
46% 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 14,000 minutes out of 31,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.59%, 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. 10.3% 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 419 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 runs 73.5% on time across 1,824 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 1,826 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 5.59% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 1,717 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to LGA questions
How often is CLE to LGA delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.1% of the 1,826 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLE to LGA compared with the rest of the country?
75.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to LGA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.1%, 31 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 July delays on CLE to LGA?
July is the weakest month at 65.2% on time, compared with 88.3% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on CLE to LGA77.0%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to LGA64.7%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record64.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CLE to LGA and LGA to CLE are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.