Flight number record
DL 2018
Delta Air Lines · New York to West Palm Beach
- Route
- JFK → PBI
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 334
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2018, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2018 earns an A−. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 334 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2018's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 114 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 318 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.49%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 334 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When DL 2018 flies
DL 2018 flies JFK to PBI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 134 of 334 flights, with 07:15 (43 flights) and 07:05 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00134 flights40.1%
- Departs 07:1543 flights12.9%
- Departs 07:0538 flights11.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2018 runs level with that at 88.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 2018 next to JFK to PBI
Every carrier on JFK to PBI combined arrived on time 74.8% of the time across 2,050 flights, so DL 2018 is 14 points ahead of it. Delta flew 667 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2018thin sample | 334 | 88.7% | 58 min | 4.49% | A− |
| All Delta Air Lines on JFK–PBI | 667 | 80.9% | 75 min | 4.65% | B− |
| All carriers on JFK–PBI | 2,050 | 74.8% | 71 min | 4.59% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2018 quarter by quarter
DL 2018 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 81.2%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 84 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.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights86.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.3%
- Jul–Sep 202631 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2018 did best on Friday at 95.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 76.7%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2018 runs when it is late
DL 2018 often beats the schedule: 148 of 318 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 36 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early148 flights46.5%
- Within 15 min134 flights42.1%
- 15–29 min late11 flights3.5%
- 30–59 min late13 flights4.1%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 318 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 25 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 9 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 20 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PBI.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2018
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 January 2026, 4 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January 2026 | 4 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 June 2026 | 3 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 November 2025 | 2 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 April 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 May 2026 | 1 hour 44 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2018 runs late
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,094 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 40%National Airspace System
- 2%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,210 of the 2,094 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,094 delay minutes reported on DL 2018.
Cancellations run at 4.49%, against 1.89% 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,028 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 same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including PBI to JFK (78), but none flew often enough under DL 2018 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to JFK to PBI only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 334 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 DL 2018
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2018: 4.49% of its 334 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to PBI, every carrier and departure
- PBI to JFK, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1638 on the same route73.1%
- JetBlue Airways 1053 on the same route65.9%
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.