Carrier route record
WNLGA→ATL
Southwest Airlines · New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 700
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LGA to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a B−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 700 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 4,935 at 79.1% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 4,935 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 676 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.5%
Every carrier on LGA to ATL, 8,500 flights
These figures cover 700 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
Southwest against every carrier on LGA to ATL
Southwest flew 700 of the 8,500 flights on LGA to ATL, about 8% of it. Its 75.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Frontier at 54.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 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.
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Departure window
When Southwest 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 25 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am91 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am98 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm169 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm58 flights57.1%
- 5pm–8pm121 flights61.5%
- 8pm–5am163 flights70.8%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.9% of the time, against 57.1% for the afternoon window. That is 34 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 169 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LGA to ATL through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025112 flights83.9%
- Oct–Dec 2025352 flights65.7%
- Jan–Mar 2026236 flights85.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 75.1% on time across 700 flights.
Southwest on LGA to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 65.7%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 233 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.2%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on LGA to ATL runs when it is late
Southwest on LGA to ATL often beats the schedule: 195 of 676 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 168 late arrivals split 54 under half an hour, 53 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 61 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early195 flights28.8%
- Within 15 min313 flights46.3%
- 15–29 min late54 flights8.0%
- 30–59 min late53 flights7.8%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights4.9%
- 2+ hours late28 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 676 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 195 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 65 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 38 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 ATL.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on LGA to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 December 2025, 8 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across December, November and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 December 2025 | 8 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 6 hours 23 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 4 September 2025 | 6 hours 16 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 September 2025 | 5 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. The split is drawn from 12,373 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 90.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.29%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
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 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 72.0% on time across 700 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 700 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on LGA to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.29% 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. 676 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ATL, every carrier
- Southwest on ATL to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to ATL79.1%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ATL76.4%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to ATL54.0%
- Southwest Airlines 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.