Carrier route record
DLDTW→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to New York
- Flights
- 1,981
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 51%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 4.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,981 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,052 at 76.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,897 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.04%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on DTW to LGA, 3,862 flights
These figures cover 1,981 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 DTW to LGA
Delta flew 1,981 of the 3,862 flights on DTW to LGA, most of the route. Its 76.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.8% to Spirit at 67.9%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.8% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 67.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 829 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,052 | 76.8% | 80 min | 5.80% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,981 | 76.4% | 74 min | 4.04% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines | 829 | 67.9% | 76 min | 8.32% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 8.3% 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
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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 29 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am359 flights87.9%
- 8am–11am366 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm229 flights75.3%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm299 flights58.9%
- 8pm–5am364 flights72.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.9% on time, against 87.9% 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 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.5%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DTW to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on DTW to LGA often beats the schedule: 486 of 1,897 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 448 late arrivals split 141 under half an hour, 136 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 171 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early486 flights25.6%
- Within 15 min963 flights50.8%
- 15–29 min late141 flights7.4%
- 30–59 min late136 flights7.2%
- 1–2 hours late107 flights5.6%
- 2+ hours late64 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,897 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
79 of 419 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 108 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 DTW to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 December 2025, 14 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 December 2025 | 14 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 July 2026 | 9 hours 28 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 April 2026 | 9 hours 24 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 June 2026 | 9 hours 14 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 July 2026 | 9 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 33,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
56% 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 18,000 minutes out of 33,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 32,929 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.04%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
9.0% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.0% on time across 1,982 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,981 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 4.04% 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. 1,897 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 LGA76.8%
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to LGA67.9%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.