Carrier route record
DLLGA→ORD
Delta Air Lines · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,309
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 5.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 2,309 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,989 at 69.2% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 69.2% on time across 2,989 flights.
Key figures
On time
65.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,163 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.7%
Every carrier on LGA to ORD, 11,630 flights
These figures cover 2,309 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.0% 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 ORD
Delta flew 2,309 of the 11,630 flights on LGA to ORD, about 20% of it. Its 65.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 66.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 69.2% 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: 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,989 | 69.2% | 89 min | 4.78% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 1,285 | 68.3% | 62 min | 9.42% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 2,309 | 65.8% | 97 min | 5.89% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,671 | 65.4% | 90 min | 4.24% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 64.0% | 88 min | 7.04% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.8% | 90 min | 17.39% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 9.4% 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.
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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 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am549 flights84.2%
- 8am–11am220 flights76.6%
- 11am–2pm245 flights63.9%
- 2pm–5pm553 flights60.7%
- 5pm–8pm444 flights49.3%
- 8pm–5am298 flights59.6%
Scale runs 40% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.3% on time, against 84.2% 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 553 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 73.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.2%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LGA to ORD runs when it is late
Delta on LGA to ORD often beats the schedule: 628 of 2,163 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Delta on LGA to ORD is late it tends to be very late: 390 of its 740 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 193 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early628 flights29.0%
- Within 15 min795 flights36.8%
- 15–29 min late148 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late202 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late197 flights9.1%
- 2+ hours late193 flights8.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,163 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
88 of 669 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 159 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LGA to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 August 2026, 16 hours 58 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 August 2026 | 16 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 September 2025 | 14 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 April 2026 | 13 hours 12 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 15 April 2026 | 11 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 9 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 72,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 36%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
39% 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 28,000 minutes out of 72,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 72,026 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 26,000 of the 72,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.89%, 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
18.0% 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 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.
The return leg runs 68.7% on time across 2,309 flights, within 3 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 2,309 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 5.89% 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. 2,163 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
- American Airlines on LGA to ORD69.2%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ORD68.3%
- United Airlines on LGA to ORD65.4%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to ORD64.0%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.