Flight number record

DL 1387

Delta Air Lines · New York to New Orleans

Route: JFK → MSY
Departs: 16:30
Flights: 356
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1387, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1387 lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 356 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

On time

80.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.09%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 356 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When DL 1387 flies

DL 1387 flies JFK to MSY without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:30, used on 56 of 356 flights, with 16:10 (55 flights) and 16:20 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:3056 flights15.7%
Departs 16:1055 flights15.4%
Departs 16:2053 flights14.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 16:30 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1387 runs 9 points better at 80.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1387 next to JFK to MSY

Every carrier on JFK to MSY combined arrived on time 81.6% of the time across 1,142 flights, so DL 1387 is about level with it. Delta flew 720 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 1387 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1387thin sample	356	80.9%	63 min	3.09%	B−
All Delta Air Lines on JFK–MSY	720	83.6%	73 min	5.00%	B−
All carriers on JFK–MSY	1,142	81.6%	73 min	4.47%	B−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1387 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1387 held fairly steady: 79.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 83.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 79.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202591 flights79.5%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights81.0%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights83.5%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights79.5%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1387 did best on Saturday at 86.3% on time and worst on Tuesday at 72.5%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1387 runs late

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 4,151 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
27%

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 4,151 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 4,151 delay minutes reported on DL 1387.

Cancellations run at 3.09%, 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 routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,182 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.

DL 1387 is not only a JFK to MSY flight. It also flew MSY to JFK (302 flights, 82.8% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 356 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.

Other routes flown as DL 1387
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
MSY to JFKthin sample	302	82.8%	62 min	3.97%	B−

What to do with this

Booking DL 1387

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 1387: 3.09% of its 356 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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