Carrier route record
DLMIA→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Miami to New York
- Flights
- 1,916
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MIA to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% 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 1,916 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 3,549 at 67.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on MIA to LGA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,825 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.0%
Every carrier on MIA to LGA, 6,010 flights
These figures cover 1,916 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 MIA to LGA
Delta flew 1,916 of the 6,010 flights on MIA to LGA, about 32% of it. Its 72.2% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.0% to Spirit at 59.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 67.0% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 59.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 422 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,916 | 72.2% | 65 min | 3.97% | C− |
| American Airlines | 3,549 | 67.0% | 82 min | 3.47% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 60.0% | 90 min | 11.76% | D− |
| Spirit Airlines | 422 | 59.0% | 73 min | 7.82% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 7.8% 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 MIA to LGA
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 33 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am363 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am196 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm480 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm427 flights70.0%
- 5pm–8pm156 flights57.8%
- 8pm–5am294 flights54.0%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.0% on time, against 87.0% 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 480 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MIA to LGA through the year
July is the worst month at 55.2% on time, 28 points below June, the best at 82.9%. 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 182 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.4%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
34% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 33,008 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 11,000 minutes out of 33,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.97%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 10.2% 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 1,096 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 70.2% on time across 1,916 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 1,916 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 MIA to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.97% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,825 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to MIA, the return leg
- American Airlines on MIA to LGA67.0%
- Frontier Airlines on MIA to LGA60.0%
- Spirit Airlines on MIA to LGA59.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.