Route reliability record
RIC→LGA
Richmond to New York
- Flights
- 2,280
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 291 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 2,280 RIC to LGA flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly RIC to LGA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.5% of the time and Saturday flights 81.0%, against 73.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
73.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,135 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.18%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
74.8% on time across 2,192 flights
These figures cover 2,280 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 | 2,192 | 74.8% | 85 min | 6.30% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 88 | 50.6% | 94 min | 3.41% | F− |
Flight by flight
Flights on RIC to LGA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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.
- 5am–8am579 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am487 flights81.4%
- 11am–2pm391 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm216 flights64.7%
- 5pm–8pm511 flights58.3%
- 8pm–5am96 flights69.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 85.5% 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 579 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RIC to LGA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On RIC to LGA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.3%, a wide gap of 27.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.5%
- 8–11am81.4%
- 11am–2pm72.2%
- 2–5pm64.7%
- 5–8pm58.3%
- 8pm–5am69.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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 81.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.9%, a spread of 11 points.
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.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 47,756 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 18,000 minutes out of 48,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 6.18%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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 actually costs
12.0% 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.
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 runs 74.7% on time across 2,278 flights, within about a point 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 2,280 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 6.18% 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. 2,135 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to LGA questions
How often is RIC to LGA delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.2% of the 2,280 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RIC to LGA compared with the rest of the country?
73.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 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 85.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.3%, 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
- RIC to ATL, a related route88.5%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- RIC to CLT, a related route82.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record74.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record50.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.
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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.