Carrier route record
DLLGA→RDU
Delta Air Lines · New York to Raleigh
- Flights
- 344
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to RDU lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 344 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on LGA to RDU from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 328 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.9%
Every carrier on LGA to RDU, 2,492 flights
These figures cover 344 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LGA to RDU
Delta flew 344 of the 2,492 flights on LGA to RDU, about 14% of it. Its 80.8% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.8% to American at 38.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample | 344 | 80.8% | 71 min | 4.65% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,921 | 73.1% | 63 min | 5.78% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 139 | 54.6% | 82 min | 5.76% | F− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 88 | 38.6% | 111 min | 5.68% | F− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am84 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am192 flights73.5%
- 11am–2pm65 flights85.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm3 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.6% of the time, against 73.5% for the morning window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 192 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to RDU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025211 flights76.2%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights82.4%
- Apr–Jun 202629 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 80.8% on time across 344 flights.
Split by quarter, Delta on LGA to RDU logged 30 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 211 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 74 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 29 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.6%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LGA to RDU runs when it is late
Delta on LGA to RDU often beats the schedule: 127 of 328 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 63 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 23 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early127 flights38.7%
- Within 15 min138 flights42.1%
- 15–29 min late22 flights6.7%
- 30–59 min late18 flights5.5%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights3.7%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 328 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 42 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 3 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 24 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 RDU.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LGA to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 November 2025, 5 hours 14 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 November 2025 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 October 2025 | 5 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 October 2025 | 3 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 3 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 December 2025 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 4,492 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,578 of the 4,492 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,492 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.65%, against 1.89% 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
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 431 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.7% on time across 344 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 344 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on LGA to RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.65% 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. 328 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to RDU, every carrier
- Delta on RDU to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to RDU73.1%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to RDU54.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.