Carrier route record
DLDTW→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to New York
- Flights
- 1,979
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% 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 B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,979 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,033 at 77.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on DTW to LGA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,904 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.4%
Every carrier on DTW to LGA, 4,011 flights
These figures cover 1,979 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 DTW to LGA
Delta flew 1,979 of the 4,011 flights on DTW to LGA, about 49% of it. Its 77.3% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.3% to Spirit at 69.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 77.0% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 69.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 999 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,979 | 77.3% | 69 min | 3.49% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,033 | 77.0% | 82 min | 5.81% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines | 999 | 69.6% | 77 min | 7.61% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 7.6% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW 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 31 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am355 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am366 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm232 flights74.6%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights75.4%
- 5pm–8pm298 flights59.5%
- 8pm–5am364 flights73.3%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.5% on time, against 90.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 366 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to LGA through the year
December is the weak month at 66.4% on time, against 86.5% in September. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 181 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.8%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 30,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 52%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 16,000 minutes out of 30,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 29,875 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.49%, against 1.81% 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
8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. 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 last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 502 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 81.1% on time across 1,980 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,979 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 DTW to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.49% 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. 1,904 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to DTW, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DTW to LGA77.0%
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to LGA69.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.