Carrier route record

DLRDU→LGA

Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to New York

Flights: 344
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 Delta Air Lines.

Delta on RDU to LGA sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 344 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on RDU to LGA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 330 completed flights

Avg delay

95 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.07%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.5%

Every carrier on RDU to LGA, 2,713 flights

These figures cover 344 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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

Delta against every carrier on RDU to LGA

Delta flew 344 of the 2,713 flights on RDU to LGA, about 13% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 96.9% to Frontier at 61.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on RDU to LGA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	34	96.9%	17 min	5.88%	A−
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	344	72.7%	95 min	4.07%	C−
Republic Airways	2,134	69.3%	83 min	6.42%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	201	61.0%	91 min	5.97%	D−

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 20 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–8am3 flights—
8am–11am84 flights84.8%
11am–2pm192 flights64.5%
2pm–5pm63 flights82.0%
5pm–8pm2 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 64.5% on time against 84.8% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 192 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on RDU to LGA through the year

Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025211 flights63.4%
Jan–Mar 202674 flights85.7%
Apr–Jun 202629 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 72.7% on time across 344 flights.

Split by quarter, Delta on RDU to LGA logged 30 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 211 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 74 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 29 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 72.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 80.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 64.3%. 16 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 8,554 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
20%

40% 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 8,554 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 8,554 reported delay minutes.

40% 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 3,434 minutes out of 8,554, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 4.07%, 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. 13.6% 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.

At 431 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 80.8% on time across 344 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 344 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 Delta on RDU to LGA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.07% 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. 330 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures