Carrier route record
DLLGA→ATL
Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 4,933
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to ATL lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 4,933 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,576 at 77.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on LGA to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,778 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on LGA to ATL, 8,343 flights
These figures cover 4,933 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LGA to ATL
Delta flew 4,933 of the 8,343 flights on LGA to ATL, most of the route. Its 79.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 80.0% to Frontier at 58.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 77.8% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 58.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 889 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 10 | 80.0% | 101 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 4,933 | 79.9% | 73 min | 2.98% | B |
| Republic Airways | 1,576 | 77.8% | 64 min | 4.70% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 935 | 73.6% | 78 min | 3.64% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 889 | 58.4% | 106 min | 5.74% | D− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 5.7% 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
Delta flight numbers on LGA to ATL
- DL 55006:0089.8% · 365 flights
- DL 99209:0086.8% · 355 flights
- DL 96817:0074.3% · 351 flights
- DL 34206:5993.1% · 349 flights
- DL 99311:0084.0% · 348 flights
- DL 97415:0079.6% · 347 flights
- DL 98813:5976.9% · 346 flights
- DL 99012:0083.5% · 337 flights
- DL 98909:5985.0% · 326 flights
- DL 96418:0069.6% · 325 flights
- DL 99413:0083.1% · 325 flights
- DL 96916:0066.3% · 325 flights
- DL 97520:3066.5% · 296 flights
- DL 36408:0090.5% · 283 flights
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 25 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am708 flights91.5%
- 8am–11am974 flights87.3%
- 11am–2pm1,007 flights83.5%
- 2pm–5pm1,029 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm919 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am296 flights66.5%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.5% of the time, against 66.5% for the overnight window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 1,029 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to ATL through the year
December is the weak month at 66.8% on time, against 91.5% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 436 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.1%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 69,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 91.5% on time here. The split is drawn from 69,490 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. carrier at 34%, late-arriving aircraft at 34% and national airspace system at 32% split the 69,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations run at 2.98%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
7.3% 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 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. 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 76.7% on time across 4,936 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 4,933 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 LGA to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.98% 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. 4,778 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to ATL77.8%
- Southwest Airlines on LGA to ATL73.6%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to ATL58.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.