Route reliability record
LGA→DAL
New York to Dallas
- Flights
- 1,514
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,381 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% 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 1,514 LGA to DAL flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly LGA to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.8%, against 73.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,450 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.0% on time across 1,514 flights
These figures cover 1,514 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 DAL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,514 | 73.0% | 70 min | 3.43% | C− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Dallas
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EWR → DFWNewark to Dallas-Fort Worth | United Airlines | 78.5% | 80.6% | 2.62% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 454 09:00 |
| 2. EWR → DFWNewark to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 76.8% | 80.1% | 4.18% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 2728 06:00 |
| 3. JFK → DFWNew York to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 75.6% | 77.6% | 2.56% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1766 14:30 |
| 4. LGA → DALNew York to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 70.5% | 73.0% | 3.43% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. LGA → DFWNew York to Dallas-Fort Worth | Delta Air Lines | 67.9% | 71.0% | 4.35% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 873 09:15 |
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am327 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am308 flights79.3%
- 11am–2pm181 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm348 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm324 flights57.7%
- 8pm–5am26 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 89.0% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 348 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 64.0%. January is the strongest month at 87.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. May was the busiest month here, with 145 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.5%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 27,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 27,317 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 89.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.43%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% 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 1,381 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 63.2% on time across 1,514 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,514 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 DAL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.43% 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. 1,450 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to DAL questions
How often is LGA to DAL 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 27.0% of the 1,514 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is LGA to DAL compared with the rest of the country?
73.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 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 DAL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.7%, 31 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 October delays on LGA to DAL?
October is the weakest month at 64.0% on time, compared with 87.4% in January. Across the year that is 23 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
- DAL to LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to DAL and DAL 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.