Route reliability record
LGA→DAL
New York to Dallas
- Flights
- 1,558
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,381 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,558 LGA to DAL flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly LGA to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Friday flights 78.6%, against 72.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, 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
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,483 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
72.7% on time across 1,558 flights
These figures cover 1,558 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 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 | 1,558 | 72.7% | 67 min | 4.17% | C− |
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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 | 77.4% | 79.5% | 2.66% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 454 09:00 |
| 2. EWR → DFWNewark to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 76.8% | 80.1% | 4.10% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 2728 06:00 |
| 3. JFK → DFWNew York to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 75.1% | 77.2% | 2.72% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1953 11:00 |
| 4. LGA → DALNew York to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 69.7% | 72.7% | 4.17% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 5. LGA → DFWNew York to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 67.7% | 71.2% | 4.92% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1987 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 51 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am327 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am311 flights79.2%
- 11am–2pm221 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm333 flights62.8%
- 5pm–8pm305 flights59.7%
- 8pm–5am61 flights39.2%
Scale runs 30% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 39.2% on time, against 90.5% 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 333 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGA to DAL 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 DAL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 39.2%, a wide gap of 51.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.5%
- 8–11am79.2%
- 11am–2pm76.8%
- 2–5pm62.8%
- 5–8pm59.7%
- 8pm–5am39.2%
best all US flightsScale 30% to 95%.
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, Friday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.4%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 9 to one. The split is drawn from 27,298 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 90.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.17%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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 actually costs
9.8% 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.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 59.8% on time across 1,557 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,558 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 4.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,483 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to DAL questions
How often is LGA to DAL delayed?
Roughly 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 27.3% of the 1,558 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LGA to DAL compared with the rest of the country?
72.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 90.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 39.2%, 51 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 route66.7%
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.7%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.