Route reliability record
HOU→LGA
Houston to New York
- Flights
- 1,359
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,428 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,359 HOU to LGA flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
Best time to fly HOU to LGA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Saturday flights 71.9%, against 65.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,309 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
65.8% on time across 1,359 flights
These figures cover 1,359 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to LGA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,359 | 65.8% | 63 min | 2.43% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to New York
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAH → LGAHouston to New York | Delta Air Lines | 74.2% | 77.2% | 3.95% | 5am–8am, Fri | DL 1417 07:00 |
| 2. IAH → EWRHouston to Newark | United Airlines | 73.3% | 74.5% | 1.56% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1797 06:00 |
| 3. IAH → LGAHouston to New York | United Airlines | 70.2% | 71.4% | 1.64% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. HOU → LGAHouston to New York | Southwest Airlines | 64.2% | 65.8% | 2.43% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 67 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–8am334 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am250 flights82.0%
- 11am–2pm310 flights62.5%
- 2pm–5pm109 flights22.8%
- 5pm–8pm356 flights46.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 15% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 22.8% for the afternoon window. That is 67 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 45 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.1%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 28,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 11,000 minutes out of 28,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 28,147 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 9,697 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.8% 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 1,428 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 71.9% on time across 1,359 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,359 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LGA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 84.1% on time and March 38.7%, a swing of 45 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,309 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to LGA questions
How often is HOU to LGA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.2% of the 1,359 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is HOU to LGA compared with the rest of the country?
65.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to LGA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 22.8%, 67 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are March delays on HOU to LGA?
March is the weakest month at 38.7% on time, compared with 84.1% in September. Across the year that is 45 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record65.8%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. HOU to LGA and LGA to HOU are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.