Route reliability record
LGA→DFW
New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 6,646
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,389 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% 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 6,646 LGA to DFW flights, of which American Airlines flew 4,309 at 71.2% on time.
Best time to fly LGA to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.8%, against 70.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,254 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
71.2% on time across 4,309 flights
These figures cover 6,646 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% 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 DFW
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 4,309 | 71.2% | 93 min | 4.92% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,851 | 69.8% | 73 min | 4.97% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 195 | 66.5% | 78 min | 8.21% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 291 | 59.3% | 108 min | 7.22% | D− |
Delta Air Lines cancels 5.0% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on LGA to DFW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
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 27 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am983 flights85.7%
- 8am–11am1,201 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm1,134 flights76.1%
- 2pm–5pm1,150 flights62.8%
- 5pm–8pm1,312 flights58.7%
- 8pm–5am866 flights63.6%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.7% on time, against 85.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 1,312 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGA to DFW 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 DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.7%, a wide gap of 27.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.7%
- 8–11am75.5%
- 11am–2pm76.1%
- 2–5pm62.8%
- 5–8pm58.7%
- 8pm–5am63.6%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 61.6% on time, against 78.1% in January. 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 614 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.5%, a spread of 11 points.
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 164,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 164,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 163,561 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 85.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.13%, against 1.89% 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
13.1% 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 1,389 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 66.1% on time across 6,650 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 6,646 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 DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.13% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 6,254 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to DFW questions
How often is LGA to DFW delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.9% of the 6,646 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to DFW?
American Airlines leads at 71.2% on time across 4,309 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 69.8%, a gap of about a point. 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 DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.7%, 27 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 DFW?
December is the weakest month at 61.6% on time, compared with 78.1% in January. Across the year that is 16 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
- DFW to LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- American Airlines on LGA to DFW71.2%
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to DFW69.8%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to DFW66.5%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to DFW59.3%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- American Airlines on-time record71.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record69.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record66.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to DFW and DFW 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.