Carrier route record
DLTPA→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Tampa to New York
- Flights
- 1,724
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 62%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,724 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on TPA to LGA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 45 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,649 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on TPA to LGA, 2,764 flights
These figures cover 1,724 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on TPA to LGA
Delta flew 1,724 of the 2,764 flights on TPA to LGA, most of the route. Its 72.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 82.4% to Southwest at 33.3%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 683 | 82.4% | 136 min | 2.49% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,724 | 72.8% | 85 min | 3.54% | C− |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 354 | 66.8% | 79 min | 3.67% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 33.3% | 49 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TPA to LGA
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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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am362 flights88.2%
- 8am–11am38 flights92.1%
- 11am–2pm330 flights79.7%
- 2pm–5pm463 flights67.0%
- 5pm–8pm320 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am211 flights59.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 92.1% for the 8am–11am 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 463 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on TPA to LGA through the year
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 81.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.7%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on TPA to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on TPA to LGA often beats the schedule: 492 of 1,649 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 449 late arrivals split 123 under half an hour, 127 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 199 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early492 flights29.8%
- Within 15 min708 flights42.9%
- 15–29 min late123 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late127 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late108 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late91 flights5.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,649 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
64 of 439 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 74 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on TPA to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 16 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 16 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 October 2025 | 16 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 November 2025 | 13 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 8 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 April 2026 | 7 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 38,315 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.54%, against 1.89% 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
12.1% 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.
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.
The return leg runs 73.2% on time across 1,724 flights, within half 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 1,724 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 3.54% 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. 1,649 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to TPA, the return leg
- American Airlines on TPA to LGA82.4%
- JetBlue Airways on TPA to LGA66.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.