Carrier route record
DLDFW→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York
- Flights
- 1,955
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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: 4.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 1,955 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on DFW to LGA runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 42 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,847 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.1%
Every carrier on DFW to LGA, 6,786 flights
These figures cover 1,955 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DFW to LGA
Delta flew 1,955 of the 6,786 flights on DFW to LGA, about 29% of it. Its 73.4% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 73.4% to Frontier at 62.6%. 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) | 1,955 | 73.4% | 96 min | 4.55% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 65.8% | 75 min | 5.79% | C− |
| American Airlines | 4,298 | 64.6% | 70 min | 4.84% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 291 | 62.6% | 77 min | 5.50% | D− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DFW to LGA
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 25 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–8am442 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am220 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm480 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm343 flights66.4%
- 5pm–8pm470 flights63.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.4% on time, against 88.5% 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 480 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 82.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.5%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 47,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 17,000 of the 47,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 46,997 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 88.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.55%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 runs 71.0% on time across 1,955 flights, within 2 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 1,955 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 4.55% 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. 1,847 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
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to LGA65.8%
- American Airlines on DFW to LGA64.6%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to LGA62.6%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.