Route reliability record
DFW→LGA
Dallas-Fort Worth to New York
- Flights
- 63,515
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 1,386 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 75.9%. Roughly one flight in four arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 63,515 flights, with a median arrival 1 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 75.9%, 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
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 62,791 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 2.23%
Best carrier
Delta
77.4% on time across 63,515 flights
These figures cover 64,000 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 63,515 | 77.4% | 57 min | 0.97% | B+ |
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 18 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–8am9,845 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am13,021 flights81.9%
- 11am–2pm11,750 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm11,115 flights73.4%
- 5pm–8pm11,433 flights68.9%
- 8pm–5am6,352 flights75.4%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.9% of the time, against 68.9% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 63,515 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
January is the weak month at 70.4% on time, against 81.4% in May. 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.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 2 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
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 712,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% 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 712,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 2.23%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.6%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route are the about 50 minutes kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,386 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 72.9% on time across 10,743 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
63,515 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 68.9% on time against 86.9% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 18 points is the largest single thing you control here. Delta Air Lines is the strongest operator if the fares are close.
Common questions
DFW to LGA questions
How often is DFW to LGA delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.6% of the 63,515 flights in this analysis, against 24.1% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is DFW to LGA compared with the rest of the country?
77.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 75.9%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to LGA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.9%, 18 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 January delays on DFW to LGA?
January is the weakest month at 70.4% on time, compared with 81.4% in May. Across the year that is 11 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 11.3 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to LGA and LGA to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.