Carrier route record
AAPBI→LGA
American Airlines · West Palm Beach to New York
- Flights
- 405
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PBI to LGA earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.9% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 405 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,553 at 72.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on PBI to LGA runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 197 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 387 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.8%
Every carrier on PBI to LGA, 3,199 flights
These figures cover 405 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.4% 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
American against every carrier on PBI to LGA
American flew 405 of the 3,199 flights on PBI to LGA, about 13% of it. Its 57.9% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 72.4% to American at 57.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,553 | 72.4% | 66 min | 4.44% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 126 | 67.8% | 125 min | 5.56% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,115 | 67.7% | 83 min | 4.66% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 405 | 57.9% | 97 min | 4.20% | D− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.7% 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 American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm199 flights68.6%
- 2pm–5pm31 flights—
- 5pm–8pm164 flights45.5%
- 8pm–5am8 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 45.5% on time, against 68.6% for the 11am–2pm 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 199 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PBI to LGA through the year
- Oct–Dec 2025129 flights56.8%
- Jan–Mar 2026183 flights55.6%
- Apr–Jun 202693 flights63.7%
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 57.9% on time across 405 flights.
Quarter by quarter American on PBI to LGA held fairly steady: 56.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 55.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 63.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 70.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 39.3%. 31 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
59% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 15,871 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.20%, 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. 19.4% 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 1,035 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 70.4% on time across 405 flights, 13 points above 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 405 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking American on PBI to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.20% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 387 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PBI to LGA, every carrier
- American on LGA to PBI, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on PBI to LGA72.4%
- Republic Airways on PBI to LGA67.8%
- JetBlue Airways on PBI to LGA67.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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.