Carrier route record
DLORD→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 2,309
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 5.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 2,309 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,284 at 71.5% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.5% on time across 1,284 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,146 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.6%
Every carrier on ORD to LGA, 11,630 flights
These figures cover 2,309 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.1% 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 ORD to LGA
Delta flew 2,309 of the 11,630 flights on ORD to LGA, about 20% of it. Its 68.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 71.5% to Spirit at 48.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,284 | 71.5% | 69 min | 8.64% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 2,309 | 68.7% | 96 min | 5.89% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,671 | 66.1% | 83 min | 3.98% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,990 | 65.6% | 80 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.0% | 69 min | 16.30% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 48.8% | 101 min | 9.86% | F− |
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.
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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 28 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am483 flights82.7%
- 8am–11am617 flights76.5%
- 11am–2pm225 flights68.9%
- 2pm–5pm249 flights59.9%
- 5pm–8pm542 flights54.8%
- 8pm–5am193 flights56.5%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.8% on time, against 82.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 617 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 72.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.0%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on ORD to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on ORD to LGA often beats the schedule: 681 of 2,146 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Delta on ORD to LGA is late it tends to be very late: 345 of its 672 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 164 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early681 flights31.7%
- Within 15 min793 flights37.0%
- 15–29 min late152 flights7.1%
- 30–59 min late175 flights8.2%
- 1–2 hours late181 flights8.4%
- 2+ hours late164 flights7.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,146 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 621 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 68 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 119 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 LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on ORD to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 November 2025, 20 hours 42 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 November 2025 | 20 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 May 2026 | 17 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 November 2025 | 15 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 14 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 May 2026 | 13 hours 53 minutes | Extreme weather |
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 64,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 64,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 64,485 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 82.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.89%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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
16.1% 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 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.
The return leg runs 65.8% on time across 2,309 flights, within 3 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 2,309 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 5.89% 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. 2,146 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 LGA71.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to LGA66.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to LGA65.6%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to LGA48.8%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.