Carrier route record
DLLGA→MCI
Delta Air Lines · New York to Kansas City
- Flights
- 972
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 53%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to MCI carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.0% 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 972 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on LGA to MCI runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 73 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 911 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.97%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
68.0%
Every carrier on LGA to MCI, 1,850 flights
These figures cover 972 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LGA to MCI
Delta flew 972 of the 1,850 flights on LGA to MCI, most of the route. Its 70.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 70.0% to American at 50.0%. 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) | 972 | 70.0% | 82 min | 5.97% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 35 | 69.7% | 52 min | 5.71% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 839 | 65.8% | 69 min | 4.41% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 50.0% | 35 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LGA to MCI
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am108 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am217 flights79.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm320 flights59.0%
- 5pm–8pm85 flights79.7%
- 8pm–5am242 flights67.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.3% of the time, against 59.0% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 320 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to MCI through the year
December is the weak month at 34.0% on time, against 86.9% in September. 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 89 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.2%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LGA to MCI runs when it is late
Delta on LGA to MCI often beats the schedule: 301 of 911 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 273 late arrivals split 79 under half an hour, 74 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 120 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early301 flights33.0%
- Within 15 min337 flights37.0%
- 15–29 min late79 flights8.7%
- 30–59 min late74 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late69 flights7.6%
- 2+ hours late51 flights5.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 911 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
29 of 218 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 84 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at MCI.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LGA to MCI
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 June 2026, 13 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across June, November, September, August and December, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 June 2026 | 13 hours 15 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 17 November 2025 | 11 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 September 2025 | 8 hours 43 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 August 2026 | 7 hours 3 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 December 2025 | 5 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,583 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 22,329 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.97%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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
13.2% 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 1,107 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 78.4% on time across 972 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 972 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 MCI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.97% 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. 911 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to MCI, every carrier
- Delta on MCI to LGA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on LGA to MCI65.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.