Carrier route record
DLLGA→CHS
Delta Air Lines · New York to Charleston
- Flights
- 403
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to CHS sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 403 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on LGA to CHS runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 94 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 387 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.4%
Every carrier on LGA to CHS, 1,441 flights
These figures cover 403 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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
Delta against every carrier on LGA to CHS
Delta flew 403 of the 1,441 flights on LGA to CHS, about 28% of it. Its 68.2% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.4% to Delta at 68.2%.
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 | 1,038 | 75.4% | 71 min | 5.59% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 403 | 68.2% | 72 min | 3.47% | C− |
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 403 flights.
- 5am–8am15 flights—
- 8am–11am38 flights66.7%
- 11am–2pm226 flights70.2%
- 2pm–5pm120 flights60.7%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 70.2% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 60.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 226 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to CHS through the year
December is the weak month at 47.1% on time, against 90.6% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.1% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 56.9%. 17 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 8,817 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,604 of the 8,817 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,817 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.2% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.8% on time across 403 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. 403 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 Delta on LGA to CHS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 387 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.