Route reliability record
LGA→CHS
New York to Charleston
- Flights
- 1,441
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 641 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.0% 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 1,441 LGA to CHS flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,038 at 75.4% on time.
Best time to fly LGA to CHS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.4%, against 73.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 42 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,364 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
75.4% on time across 1,038 flights
These figures cover 1,441 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to CHS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 75.4% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 68.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 403 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,038 | 75.4% | 71 min | 5.59% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 403 | 68.2% | 72 min | 3.47% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.6% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Charleston
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. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EWR → CHSNewark to Charleston | United Airlines | 80.5% | 81.7% | 1.50% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. JFK → CHSNew York to Charleston | JetBlue Airways | 71.3% | 74.1% | 3.79% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 1273 08:00 |
| 3. LGA → CHSNew York to Charleston | Republic Airways | 71.2% | 75.4% | 5.59% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 4. LGA → CHSNew York to Charleston | Delta Air Lines | 65.8% | 68.2% | 3.47% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
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 16 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am23 flights—
- 8am–11am347 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm272 flights71.8%
- 2pm–5pm483 flights71.6%
- 5pm–8pm231 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am85 flights69.9%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.7% of the time, against 65.4% for the evening window. That is 16 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 483 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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 52.7% on time, against 85.8% in June. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 142 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 68.7%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 25,789 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 81.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.00%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.1% 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 641 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 runs 74.8% on time across 1,440 flights, within about a point 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 1,441 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 CHS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.00% 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. 1,364 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to CHS questions
How often is LGA to CHS 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 26.6% of the 1,441 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to CHS?
Republic Airways leads at 75.4% on time across 1,038 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 68.2%, a gap of 7 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 CHS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.4%, 16 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 CHS?
December is the weakest month at 52.7% on time, compared with 85.8% in June. Across the year that is 33 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
- CHS to LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on LGA to CHS75.4%
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to CHS68.2%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- ATL to CHS, a related route83.7%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record68.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to CHS and CHS 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.