Route reliability record
LGA→ORD
New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 11,625
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 733 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 11,625 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 2,296 at 68.6% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 68.6% on time across 2,296 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 11,012 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
68.6% on time across 2,296 flights
These figures cover 12,000 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to ORD
The four carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,296 | 68.6% | 96 min | 4.75% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 1,298 | 68.6% | 62 min | 9.32% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,947 | 67.5% | 94 min | 4.48% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,662 | 66.7% | 88 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 330 | 62.1% | 95 min | 7.27% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.8% | 90 min | 17.39% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 9.3% 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
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 38 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am2,035 flights85.7%
- 8am–11am2,083 flights79.6%
- 11am–2pm1,433 flights70.3%
- 2pm–5pm2,440 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm2,441 flights48.1%
- 8pm–5am1,193 flights60.9%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.1% 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 2,441 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 55.8%. February is the strongest month at 79.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. October was the busiest month here, with 1,025 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 319,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 319,000 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 319,377 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 115,000 minutes out of 319,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.94%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.8% 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 733 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 67.3% on time across 11,625 flights, within half a point 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 11,625 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 this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.94% 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. 11,012 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to ORD questions
How often is LGA to ORD delayed?
About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.7% of the 11,625 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to ORD?
Delta Air Lines leads at 68.6% on time across 2,296 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 66.7%, a gap of 2 points. 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 ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 48.1%, 38 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 ORD?
October is the weakest month at 55.8% on time, compared with 79.7% in February. Across the year that is 24 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
- ORD to LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record68.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record68.6%
- American Airlines on-time record67.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LGA to ORD and ORD to LGA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.