Carrier route record
DLLGA→PBI
Delta Air Lines · New York to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 1,553
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to PBI carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% 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 1,553 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 405 at 70.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on LGA to PBI runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,481 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on LGA to PBI, 3,199 flights
These figures cover 1,553 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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 PBI
Delta flew 1,553 of the 3,199 flights on LGA to PBI, about 49% of it. Its 72.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 73.9% to JetBlue at 67.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 | 126 | 73.9% | 48 min | 4.76% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,553 | 72.1% | 72 min | 4.38% | C− |
| American Airlines | 405 | 70.4% | 109 min | 3.95% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,115 | 67.3% | 74 min | 4.30% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.3% 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.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LGA to PBI
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 32 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am341 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am162 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm370 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights61.3%
- 5pm–8pm170 flights59.9%
- 8pm–5am150 flights65.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.9% on time, against 92.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to PBI through the year
July is the worst month at 63.3% on time, 18 points below June, the best at 81.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.2%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 30,000 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 14,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 29,576 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.38%, 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. 11.2% 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 1,035 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 72.4% on time across 1,553 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 1,553 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 PBI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.38% 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. 1,481 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to PBI, every carrier
- Delta on PBI to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to PBI73.9%
- American Airlines on LGA to PBI70.4%
- JetBlue Airways on LGA to PBI67.3%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.