Route reliability record
PWM→LGA
Portland to New York
- Flights
- 1,137
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 269 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five 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 1,137 PWM to LGA flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly PWM to LGA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Saturday flights 83.3%, against 81.4% 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
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,085 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
81.4% on time across 1,107 flights
These figures cover 1,137 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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 PWM to LGA
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,107 | 81.4% | 79 min | 4.43% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 27 | 80.8% | 568 min | 3.70% | B− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 176 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Portland to New York
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PWM → EWRPortland to Newark | Republic Airways | 79.4% | 82.4% | 3.60% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. PWM → LGAPortland to New York | Republic Airways | 77.8% | 81.4% | 4.43% | 8am–11am, Sat (route) | — |
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am356 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am108 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm363 flights80.3%
- 2pm–5pm139 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm171 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 66.7% for the evening window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 66.2% on time, against 94.0% in August. 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 141 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
33% 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 6,164 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 18,562 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 6,861 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.40%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 actually costs
8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 269 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.5% on time across 1,137 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,137 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 4.40% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,085 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PWM to LGA questions
How often is PWM to LGA delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.6% of the 1,137 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is PWM to LGA compared with the rest of the country?
81.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PWM to LGA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.7%, 26 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 PWM to LGA?
December is the weakest month at 66.2% on time, compared with 94.0% in August. Across the year that is 28 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 PWM — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- PWM to ORD, a related route77.2%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- PWM to BWI, a related route81.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.4%
- American Airlines on-time record80.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record66.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. PWM to LGA and LGA to PWM 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.