Carrier route record

DLTPA→LGA

Delta Air Lines · Tampa to New York

Flights: 1,666
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 59%
Carriers: 5

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

Delta on TPA to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% 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 1,666 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 690 at 78.5% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on TPA to LGA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,597 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.30%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.7%

Every carrier on TPA to LGA, 2,841 flights

These figures cover 1,666 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 TPA to LGA

Delta flew 1,666 of the 2,841 flights on TPA to LGA, most of the route. Its 72.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 78.5% to Southwest at 33.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 78.5% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 478 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to LGA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	690	78.5%	122 min	3.04%	B−
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,666	72.8%	84 min	3.30%	C−
JetBlue Airways	478	64.5%	79 min	3.77%	D−
Republic Airwaysthin sample	4	50.0%	40 min	0.00%	F+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	3	33.3%	49 min	0.00%	F+

JetBlue Airways cancels 3.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on TPA to LGA

DL 272307:1587.4% · 365 flights

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 29 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am362 flights87.3%
8am–11am100 flights81.0%
11am–2pm268 flights80.1%
2pm–5pm411 flights68.4%
5pm–8pm261 flights62.9%
8pm–5am264 flights58.1%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.1% on time, against 87.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 411 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on TPA to LGA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 52.9% on time, against 91.3% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.1%. 14 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 37,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
29%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

39% 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 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 36,638 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 87.3% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.30%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 11.4% 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 1,010 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 runs 73.7% on time across 1,666 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 1,666 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 Delta on TPA to LGA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.30% 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. 1,597 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