Route reliability record
RIC→LGA
Richmond to New York
- Flights
- 2,264
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 291 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.6% 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 2,264 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,135 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
73.2% on time across 2,172 flights
These figures cover 2,264 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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 RIC 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 | 2,172 | 73.2% | 79 min | 5.71% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 66.7% | 21 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 88 | 50.6% | 94 min | 3.41% | F− |
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 27 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–8am576 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am440 flights80.4%
- 11am–2pm472 flights66.4%
- 2pm–5pm209 flights65.2%
- 5pm–8pm522 flights58.1%
- 8pm–5am45 flights70.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.1% on time, against 85.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 576 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 56.9% on time, against 84.2% in June. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 211 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.7%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 48,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 20,000 minutes out of 48,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 47,511 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 85.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.61%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.9% 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 291 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.9% on time across 2,262 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,264 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 this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.61% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 2,135 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to LGA questions
How often is RIC to LGA delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.7% of the 2,264 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is RIC to LGA compared with the rest of the country?
72.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RIC to LGA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.1%, 27 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 RIC to LGA?
December is the weakest month at 56.9% on time, compared with 84.2% in June. Across the year that is 27 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record73.2%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record66.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record50.6%
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. RIC to LGA and LGA to RIC are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.