Carrier route record
DLLGA→TPA
Delta Air Lines · New York to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,724
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 62%
- 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 TPA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 1,724 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on LGA to TPA runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,656 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.5%
Every carrier on LGA to TPA, 2,763 flights
These figures cover 1,724 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 TPA
Delta flew 1,724 of the 2,763 flights on LGA to TPA, most of the route. Its 73.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 100.0% to American at 65.9%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,724 | 73.2% | 77 min | 3.54% | C− |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 353 | 65.9% | 66 min | 3.40% | C− |
| American Airlines | 683 | 65.9% | 76 min | 2.49% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LGA to TPA
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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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am356 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am237 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm406 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm390 flights63.8%
- 5pm–8pm323 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.3% on time, against 88.7% 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 406 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to TPA through the year
December is the weak month at 59.9% on time, against 86.2% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.0%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LGA to TPA runs when it is late
Delta on LGA to TPA often beats the schedule: 575 of 1,656 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 444 late arrivals split 118 under half an hour, 136 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 190 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early575 flights34.7%
- Within 15 min637 flights38.5%
- 15–29 min late118 flights7.1%
- 30–59 min late136 flights8.2%
- 1–2 hours late108 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late82 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,656 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
59 of 378 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 125 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 TPA.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LGA to TPA
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 May 2026, 11 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 May 2026 | 11 hours 4 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 December 2025 | 8 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 July 2026 | 6 hours 53 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 30 October 2025 | 6 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 September 2025 | 5 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
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 34,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 34,367 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 88.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.54%, against 1.89% 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 costs
11.5% 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 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.
The return leg runs 72.8% on time across 1,724 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 1,724 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 TPA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.54% 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. 1,656 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to TPA, every carrier
- Delta on TPA to LGA, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on LGA to TPA65.9%
- American Airlines on LGA to TPA65.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.