Route reliability record
LGA→BUF
New York to Buffalo
- Flights
- 1,660
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 292 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.2% 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 C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,660 LGA to BUF flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly LGA to BUF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.2% of the time and Saturday flights 83.4%, against 74.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,556 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.20%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
74.7% on time across 1,637 flights
These figures cover 1,660 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 BUF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,637 | 74.7% | 68 min | 6.17% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 52.4% | 111 min | 8.70% | F− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Buffalo
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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LGA → BUFNew York to Buffalo | Republic Airways | 70.1% | 74.7% | 6.17% | 8am–11am, Sat (route) | — |
| 2. JFK → BUFNew York to Buffalo | JetBlue Airways | 67.3% | 72.0% | 6.53% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 1602 07:30 |
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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am5 flights—
- 8am–11am400 flights81.2%
- 11am–2pm228 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm467 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm84 flights77.6%
- 8pm–5am476 flights66.1%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.2% of the time, against 66.1% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 476 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGA to BUF 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 BUF, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 81.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 66.1%, a wide gap of 15.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am81.2%
- 11am–2pm80.1%
- 2–5pm72.9%
- 5–8pm77.6%
- 8pm–5am66.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 62.2% on time, against 88.7% 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. September was the busiest month here, with 190 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.6%, a spread of 18 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 27,426 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 81.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.20%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
10.7% 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.
At 292 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 77.0% on time across 1,660 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,660 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 BUF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.20% 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. 1,556 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to BUF questions
How often is LGA to BUF 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 25.6% of the 1,660 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is LGA to BUF compared with the rest of the country?
74.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LGA to BUF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.1%, 15 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 BUF?
December is the weakest month at 62.2% on time, compared with 88.7% in September. Across the year that is 27 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
- BUF to LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- ORD to BUF, a related route70.4%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record74.7%
- American Airlines on-time record52.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to BUF and BUF 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.