Carrier route record
DLFLL→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Fort Lauderdale to New York
- Flights
- 1,598
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on FLL to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 1,598 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 976 at 65.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on FLL to LGA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,530 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.3%
Every carrier on FLL to LGA, 4,653 flights
These figures cover 1,598 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 FLL to LGA
Delta flew 1,598 of the 4,653 flights on FLL to LGA, about 34% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 72.7% to American at 55.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 65.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 55.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 481 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,598 | 72.7% | 68 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 976 | 65.9% | 77 min | 6.45% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,598 | 63.5% | 68 min | 3.44% | D− |
| American Airlines | 481 | 55.5% | 97 min | 4.37% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 6.5% 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 FLL 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 34 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am361 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am6 flights—
- 11am–2pm365 flights76.9%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights65.9%
- 5pm–8pm362 flights59.8%
- 8pm–5am139 flights58.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.5% on time, against 92.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on FLL to LGA through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.0%. 21 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 29,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 28,557 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 92.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.69%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.7% 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 1,076 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 71.4% on time across 1,597 flights, within about a point 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 1,598 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 FLL to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.69% 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. 1,530 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to FLL, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to LGA65.9%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to LGA63.5%
- American Airlines on FLL to LGA55.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.