Carrier route record
AADFW→LGA
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York
- Flights
- 4,311
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 4,311 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on DFW to LGA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 133 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,051 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.1%
Every carrier on DFW to LGA, 6,650 flights
These figures cover 4,311 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on DFW to LGA
American flew 4,311 of the 6,650 flights on DFW to LGA, most of the route. Its 64.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 72.5% to Frontier at 58.7%. Two 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 | 1,851 | 72.5% | 92 min | 5.24% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,311 | 64.0% | 70 min | 4.80% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 196 | 63.2% | 81 min | 7.14% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 292 | 58.7% | 77 min | 6.51% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to LGA
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 American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am628 flights81.1%
- 8am–11am990 flights70.7%
- 11am–2pm938 flights62.0%
- 2pm–5pm994 flights54.4%
- 5pm–8pm761 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.1% of the time, against 54.4% for the afternoon window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 994 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to LGA through the year
July is the worst month at 50.3% on time, 29 points below September, the best at 79.0%. 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 376 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 72.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.3%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DFW to LGA runs when it is late
The 1,457 late arrivals split 446 under half an hour, 451 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 560 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early719 flights17.7%
- Within 15 min1,875 flights46.3%
- 15–29 min late446 flights11.0%
- 30–59 min late451 flights11.1%
- 1–2 hours late350 flights8.6%
- 2+ hours late210 flights5.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 4,051 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
201 of 1,370 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 288 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DFW to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 July 2026, 16 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 July 2026 | 16 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 March 2026 | 14 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 July 2026 | 13 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 July 2026 | 12 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 August 2026 | 11 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 102,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 102,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 102,334 reported delay minutes.
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 81.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.80%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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 costs
13.8% 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.
The 1,389 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.2% on time across 4,309 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,311 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on DFW to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.80% 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. 4,051 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to LGA, every carrier
- American on LGA to DFW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DFW to LGA72.5%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to LGA63.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to LGA58.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.