Carrier route record
DLLGA→ORD
Delta Air Lines · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,296
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% 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 2,296 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,298 at 68.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 68.6% on time across 1,298 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,173 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.3%
Every carrier on LGA to ORD, 11,625 flights
These figures cover 2,296 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.2% 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
Delta against every carrier on LGA to ORD
Delta flew 2,296 of the 11,625 flights on LGA to ORD, about 20% of it. Its 68.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 68.6% to SkyWest at 61.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three 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 (this page) | 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
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 35 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am546 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am224 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm236 flights67.8%
- 2pm–5pm548 flights63.5%
- 5pm–8pm444 flights52.2%
- 8pm–5am298 flights60.2%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 87.1% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 548 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 46.7% on time, against 88.8% in February. 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 251 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.1%. 15 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 65,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 35%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
40% 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 26,000 minutes out of 65,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 65,372 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 23,000 of the 65,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.75%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.2% 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 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 70.3% on time across 2,296 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 2,296 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 ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.75% 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. 2,173 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ORD, every carrier
- Delta on ORD to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to ORD68.6%
- American Airlines on LGA to ORD67.5%
- United Airlines on LGA to ORD66.7%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to ORD62.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.