Route reliability record
MCI→LGA
Kansas City to New York
- Flights
- 1,796
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,107 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,796 MCI to LGA flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 975 at 77.5% on time.
Best time to fly MCI to LGA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Friday flights 84.0%, against 77.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,704 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
77.5% on time across 975 flights
These figures cover 1,796 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 MCI to LGA
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 975 | 77.5% | 109 min | 5.33% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 782 | 76.4% | 60 min | 3.71% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 35 | 75.8% | 107 min | 5.71% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Delta Air Lines cancels 5.3% 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
Flights on MCI to LGA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kansas City to New York
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCI → LGAKansas City to New York | Southwest Airlines | 73.6% | 76.4% | 3.71% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. MCI → LGAKansas City to New York | Delta Air Lines | 73.4% | 77.5% | 5.33% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 370 06:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 30 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am650 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am104 flights87.3%
- 11am–2pm458 flights74.9%
- 2pm–5pm80 flights66.2%
- 5pm–8pm473 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am31 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 90.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 650 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
December is the weak month at 60.3% on time, against 89.3% in January. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.9%. 12 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 34,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 13,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 33,955 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 90.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.62%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% 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 1,107 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.7% on time across 1,796 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,796 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LGA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.62% 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. 1,704 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to LGA questions
How often is MCI to LGA delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.0% of the 1,796 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCI to LGA?
Delta Air Lines leads at 77.5% on time across 975 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.4%, a gap of about a point. 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 MCI to LGA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.5%, 30 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 MCI to LGA?
December is the weakest month at 60.3% on time, compared with 89.3% in January. Across the year that is 29 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MCI to LGA77.5%
- Southwest Airlines on MCI to LGA76.4%
- MCI to DEN, a related route76.1%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MCI to LGA and LGA to MCI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.