Carrier route record
DLLGA→DFW
Delta Air Lines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,955
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to DFW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 1,955 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on LGA to DFW runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 66 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,851 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.8%
Every carrier on LGA to DFW, 6,782 flights
These figures cover 1,955 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 DFW
Delta flew 1,955 of the 6,782 flights on LGA to DFW, about 29% of it. Its 71.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 71.0% to Frontier at 66.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,955 | 71.0% | 74 min | 4.35% | C− |
| American Airlines | 4,295 | 71.0% | 90 min | 4.98% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 241 | 69.6% | 74 min | 7.05% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 291 | 66.2% | 114 min | 6.53% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LGA to DFW
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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–8am287 flights88.4%
- 8am–11am349 flights77.9%
- 11am–2pm499 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm338 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm336 flights57.4%
- 8pm–5am146 flights58.4%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.4% on time, against 88.4% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 499 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to DFW through the year
December is the weak month at 56.0% on time, against 82.3% in August. 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 197 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.2%. 10 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 40,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 35%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 16,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 39,580 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 14,000 minutes out of 40,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.35%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.0% 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 1,389 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. 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 73.4% on time across 1,955 flights, within 2 points 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 1,955 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on LGA to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.35% 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. 1,851 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to DFW, every carrier
- Delta on DFW to LGA, the return leg
- American Airlines on LGA to DFW71.0%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to DFW69.6%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to DFW66.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.