Carrier route record
WNLGA→ATL
Southwest Airlines · New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 935
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LGA to ATL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 935 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 4,933 at 79.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.9% on time across 4,933 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 900 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on LGA to ATL, 8,343 flights
These figures cover 935 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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
Southwest against every carrier on LGA to ATL
Southwest flew 935 of the 8,343 flights on LGA to ATL, about 11% of it. Its 73.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.9% 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 | 4,933 | 79.9% | 73 min | 2.98% | B |
| Republic Airways | 1,576 | 77.8% | 64 min | 4.70% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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.
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 22 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am131 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am120 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm223 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm100 flights55.1%
- 5pm–8pm145 flights59.4%
- 8pm–5am216 flights68.3%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.9% of the time, against 55.1% 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 223 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LGA to ATL through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 58.4%. January is the strongest month at 87.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 29 points. December was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.3%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 19,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
45% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 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 18,514 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 88.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.64%, 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. 10.8% 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 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 69.6% on time across 935 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 935 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 3.64% 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. 900 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 ATL79.9%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ATL77.8%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to ATL58.4%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.