Route reliability record

LGA→TPA

New York to Tampa

Flights: 2,840
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 1,010 mi
Carriers: 5

This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,840 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,666 at 73.7% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.7% on time across 1,666 flights.

On time

71.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,735 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.17%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

73.7% on time across 1,666 flights

These figures cover 2,840 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 TPA

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 73.7% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 477 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LGA to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	3	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	4	75.0%	108 min	0.00%	B+
Delta Air Lines	1,666	73.7%	80 min	3.18%	C−
American Airlines	690	67.4%	77 min	3.04%	C−
JetBlue Airways	477	66.8%	81 min	3.35%	C−

JetBlue Airways cancels 3.4% 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.

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 39 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am541 flights88.1%
8am–11am562 flights81.0%
11am–2pm460 flights75.7%
2pm–5pm595 flights58.4%
5pm–8pm576 flights58.3%
8pm–5am106 flights49.5%

Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.5% on time, against 88.1% 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 595 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 28 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 57.4% on time, against 85.6% in April. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 281 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.5%. 17 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 63,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

41% 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 63,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 63,078 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.1% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.17%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 12.1% 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 1,010 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 72.7% on time across 2,841 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 2,840 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 3.17% 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. 2,735 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

LGA to TPA questions

How often is LGA to TPA delayed?

Roughly 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 29.0% of the 2,840 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on LGA to TPA?

Delta Air Lines leads at 73.7% on time across 1,666 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 66.8%, a gap of 7 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 TPA?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 49.5%, 39 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 December delays on LGA to TPA?

December is the weakest month at 57.4% on time, compared with 85.6% in April. Across the year that is 28 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. LGA to TPA and TPA 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.

Key figures