Carrier route record

AARSW→LGA

American Airlines · Fort Myers to New York

Flights: 200
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on RSW to LGA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 200 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on RSW to LGA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 113 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 187 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.50%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.1%

Every carrier on RSW to LGA, 904 flights

These figures cover 200 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% 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

American against every carrier on RSW to LGA

American flew 200 of the 904 flights on RSW to LGA, about 22% of it. Its 66.3% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 72.4% to American at 66.3%.

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 RSW to LGA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	704	72.4%	97 min	3.84%	C−
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	200	66.3%	80 min	5.50%	C−

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 200 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's RSW to LGA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 66.3% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on RSW to LGA through the year

Oct–Dec 202560 flights57.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.1%
Apr–Jun 202650 flights75.0%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 66.3% on time across 200 flights.

American on RSW to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 75.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.9%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 67 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 5,021 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
6%
Extreme weather
3%

56% 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 5,021 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 5,021 reported delay minutes.

36% 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 1,793 minutes out of 5,021, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 5.50%, 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.6% 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.

The 1,080 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 69.6% on time across 200 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 200 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 RSW to LGA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.50% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 187 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