Carrier route record
DLORD→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 2,296
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ORD to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% 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 2,296 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,297 at 71.0% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.0% on time across 1,297 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,164 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.3%
Every carrier on ORD to LGA, 11,625 flights
These figures cover 2,296 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 ORD to LGA
Delta flew 2,296 of the 11,625 flights on ORD to LGA, about 20% of it. Its 70.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 71.0% to Spirit at 55.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 71.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,948 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,297 | 71.0% | 69 min | 8.64% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 2,296 | 70.3% | 98 min | 4.79% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,662 | 67.4% | 81 min | 3.41% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,948 | 64.7% | 80 min | 4.31% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.0% | 69 min | 16.30% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 330 | 55.3% | 99 min | 8.48% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 8.6% 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
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 28 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am490 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am593 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm225 flights67.4%
- 2pm–5pm249 flights60.5%
- 5pm–8pm546 flights57.4%
- 8pm–5am193 flights61.1%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.4% on time, against 84.9% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 593 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ORD to LGA through the year
December is the weak month at 44.0% on time, against 85.2% in February. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 251 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.8%. 9 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 63,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
36% 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 12 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 63,244 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 84.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.79%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.0% 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 733 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 68.6% on time across 2,296 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 2,296 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 ORD to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.79% 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. 2,164 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to LGA71.0%
- United Airlines on ORD to LGA67.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to LGA64.7%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to LGA55.3%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.