Carrier route record
AALGA→MIA
American Airlines · New York to Miami
- Flights
- 3,549
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LGA to MIA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% 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 3,549 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,916 at 70.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on LGA to MIA runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,406 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on LGA to MIA, 6,006 flights
These figures cover 3,549 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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
American against every carrier on LGA to MIA
American flew 3,549 of the 6,006 flights on LGA to MIA, most of the route. Its 71.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.0% to Spirit at 66.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 107 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,549 | 71.5% | 93 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,916 | 70.2% | 69 min | 3.97% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 67.3% | 247 min | 10.08% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 418 | 66.1% | 79 min | 6.94% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 6.9% 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.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am771 flights89.5%
- 8am–11am469 flights80.5%
- 11am–2pm708 flights69.3%
- 2pm–5pm407 flights61.1%
- 5pm–8pm887 flights57.8%
- 8pm–5am307 flights70.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.8% on time, against 89.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 887 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LGA to MIA through the year
December is the weak month at 64.3% on time, against 78.2% in May. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 306 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 90,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% 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 90,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 89,895 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 89.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.69%, 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. 12.2% 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 1,096 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 67.0% on time across 3,549 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,549 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 American on LGA to MIA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.69% 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. 3,406 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to MIA, every carrier
- American on MIA to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to MIA70.2%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to MIA67.3%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to MIA66.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.