Route reliability record
LGA→ATL
New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 8,500
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 762 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% 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 8,500 LGA to ATL flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 4,935 at 79.1% on time.
Best time to fly LGA to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.1%, against 75.5% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 4,935 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 8,108 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
79.1% on time across 4,935 flights
These figures cover 8,500 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to ATL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.1% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 54.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 949 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 4,935 | 79.1% | 73 min | 3.55% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,906 | 76.4% | 66 min | 5.25% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 700 | 75.1% | 74 min | 3.29% | B− |
| Frontier Airlines | 949 | 54.0% | 111 min | 7.69% | F− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 7.7% 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
Flights on LGA to ATL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
- Delta 55006:0089.4% · 365 flights
- Frontier 328706:2960.8% · 365 flights
- Delta 99209:0086.0% · 358 flights
- Delta 96817:0074.1% · 353 flights
- Delta 99311:0082.6% · 352 flights
- Delta 97415:0079.6% · 349 flights
- Delta 34206:5993.1% · 349 flights
- Delta 98813:5973.4% · 341 flights
- Delta 99012:0082.8% · 333 flights
- Delta 99413:0078.6% · 330 flights
- Delta 98910:0082.3% · 328 flights
- Delta 96418:0069.0% · 328 flights
- Delta 96916:0067.6% · 323 flights
- Delta 97520:3066.4% · 294 flights
- Frontier 434722:0055.3% · 285 flights
- Delta 36407:5991.1% · 280 flights
- Frontier 345320:3043.1% · 266 flights
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Atlanta
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. JFK → ATLNew York to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 80.0% | 81.4% | 1.67% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2286 06:00 |
| 2. HPN → ATLWhite Plains to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 77.5% | 80.1% | 3.21% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 3. LGA → ATLNew York to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 76.3% | 79.1% | 3.55% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 342 06:59 |
| 4. EWR → ATLNewark to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 76.2% | 79.3% | 3.95% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1673 07:05 |
| 5. EWR → ATLNewark to Atlanta | United Airlines | 74.0% | 76.0% | 2.67% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 1287 21:10 |
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 24 points, against 25 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,475 flights83.8%
- 8am–11am1,396 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm1,836 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm1,499 flights71.8%
- 5pm–8pm1,591 flights64.1%
- 8pm–5am703 flights61.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.6% on time, against 85.5% for the 8am–11am 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 1,836 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGA to ATL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LGA to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 85.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.6%, a wide gap of 23.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am83.8%
- 8–11am85.5%
- 11am–2pm79.2%
- 2–5pm71.8%
- 5–8pm64.1%
- 8pm–5am61.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
December is the weak month at 67.6% on time, against 87.7% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 798 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.5%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 157,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 157,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 to one. The split is drawn from 157,464 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.36%, against 1.89% 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 actually costs
10.1% 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 762 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 72.3% on time across 8,502 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 8,500 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 ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.36% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 8,108 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to ATL questions
How often is LGA to ATL delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.5% of the 8,500 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to ATL?
Delta Air Lines leads at 79.1% on time across 4,935 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 54.0%, a gap of 25 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LGA to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.6%, 24 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 December delays on LGA to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 67.6% on time, compared with 87.7% in September. Across the year that is 20 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
- ATL to LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to ATL79.1%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ATL76.4%
- Southwest Airlines on LGA to ATL75.1%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to ATL54.0%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- LGA to BOS, a related route73.1%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to ATL and ATL to LGA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.