Carrier route record
DLDCA→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Washington to New York
- Flights
- 116
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 2%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DCA 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.2 hours. That rests on 116 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DCA to LGA record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 120 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 112 completed flights
Avg delay
131 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
65.6%
Every carrier on DCA to LGA, 4,843 flights
These figures cover 116 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DCA to LGA
Delta flew 116 of the 4,843 flights on DCA to LGA, about 2% of it. Its 89.3% on time is 24 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 65.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.3% to American at 52.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample | 116 | 89.3% | 131 min | 3.45% | A− |
| Republic Airways | 4,703 | 65.1% | 78 min | 6.53% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 24 | 52.2% | 80 min | 4.17% | F− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 116 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's DCA to LGA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 89.3% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on DCA to LGA through the year
- Apr–Jun 202654 flights90.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights87.9%
Scale runs 80% to 95%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 89.3% on time across 116 flights.
Split by quarter, Delta on DCA to LGA logged 54 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 62 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 89.3% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DCA to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on DCA to LGA often beats the schedule: 46 of 112 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 12 late arrivals split 2 under half an hour, 4 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 6 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early46 flights41.1%
- Within 15 min54 flights48.2%
- 15–29 min late2 flights1.8%
- 30–59 min late4 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights2.7%
- 2+ hours late3 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 112 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 11 of 112 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DCA to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 August 2026, 12 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 August 2026 | 12 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 July 2026 | 2 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 August 2026 | 2 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 July 2026 | 1 hour 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 June 2026 | 1 hour 23 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 89% of the 1,566 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 89%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 89%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,389 of the 1,566 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,566 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.45%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.2 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 214 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 58.4% on time across 117 flights, 31 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 31 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 116 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 DCA to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.2 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. 112 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to LGA65.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.