Carrier route record
DLDFW→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York
- Flights
- 1,851
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DFW to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,851 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on DFW to LGA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,735 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.24%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.1%
Every carrier on DFW to LGA, 6,650 flights
These figures cover 1,851 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DFW to LGA
Delta flew 1,851 of the 6,650 flights on DFW to LGA, about 28% of it. Its 72.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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 (this page) | 1,851 | 72.5% | 92 min | 5.24% | C− |
| American Airlines | 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
Delta 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 Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am413 flights86.2%
- 8am–11am174 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm503 flights71.0%
- 2pm–5pm349 flights66.0%
- 5pm–8pm412 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.4% on time, against 86.2% 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 503 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DFW to LGA through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 63.9%. January is the strongest month at 86.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. October was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.0%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DFW to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on DFW to LGA often beats the schedule: 471 of 1,735 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 477 late arrivals split 139 under half an hour, 133 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 205 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early471 flights27.1%
- Within 15 min787 flights45.4%
- 15–29 min late139 flights8.0%
- 30–59 min late133 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late109 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late96 flights5.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,735 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
63 of 448 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 92 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 Delta on DFW to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 December 2025, 19 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 December 2025 | 19 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 June 2026 | 18 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 November 2025 | 17 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 January 2026 | 16 hours 31 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 16 June 2026 | 14 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 44,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 44,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 43,631 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 86.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.24%, 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
11.8% 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 runs 69.8% on time across 1,851 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 1,851 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 Delta on DFW to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.24% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,735 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to DFW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DFW to LGA64.0%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to LGA63.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to LGA58.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.