Route reliability record
CLE→LGA
Cleveland to New York
- Flights
- 1,772
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 419 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,772 CLE to LGA flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to LGA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.4% of the time and Saturday flights 83.1%, against 76.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,654 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.15%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
76.7% on time across 1,669 flights
These figures cover 1,772 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 | 76.7% | 82 min | 6.29% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 103 | 64.3% | 78 min | 3.88% | 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.
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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 | 77.8% | 79.8% | 2.49% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 601 07:15 |
| 2. CLE → EWRCleveland to Newark | Republic Airways | 75.4% | 80.7% | 6.55% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | YX 3633 17:42 |
| 3. CLE → LGACleveland to New York | Republic Airways | 71.9% | 76.7% | 6.29% | 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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am424 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am87 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm529 flights76.6%
- 2pm–5pm381 flights71.3%
- 5pm–8pm303 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am48 flights57.8%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.8% on time, against 89.4% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 529 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLE to LGA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CLE to LGA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.8%, a wide gap of 31.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.4%
- 8–11am86.9%
- 11am–2pm76.6%
- 2–5pm71.3%
- 5–8pm60.5%
- 8pm–5am57.8%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 68.6% on time, against 88.3% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 212 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.7%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 47% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 to one. The split is drawn from 32,356 reported delay minutes.
47% 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 15,000 minutes out of 32,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 6.15%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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
10.8% 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.
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 73.1% on time across 1,769 flights, within 3 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 1,772 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 6.15% 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. 1,654 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 24.0% of the 1,772 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
76.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point 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 89.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.8%, 32 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 CLE to LGA?
December is the weakest month at 68.6% on time, compared with 88.3% in September. Across the year that is 20 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 LGA76.7%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to LGA64.3%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.5%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- CLE to ATL, a related route84.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record64.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.