Flight number record

DL 2042

Delta Air Lines · New York to Tampa

Route: JFK → TPA
Departs: 07:05
Flights: 360
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2042, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2042 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 360 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2042's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 350 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.50%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

4.6%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 360 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.

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Schedule

When DL 2042 flies

DL 2042 flies JFK to TPA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:05, used on 160 of 360 flights, with 07:00 (62 flights) and 07:15 (45 flights) next.

Departs 07:05160 flights44.4%
Departs 07:0062 flights17.2%
Departs 07:1545 flights12.5%

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 07:05 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2042 runs level with that at 87.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

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Against the route

DL 2042 next to JFK to TPA

Every carrier on JFK to TPA combined arrived on time 76.1% of the time across 2,310 flights, so DL 2042 is 12 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,094 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 2042 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2042thin sample	360	87.7%	72 min	2.50%	A
All Delta Air Lines on JFK–TPA	1,094	79.7%	69 min	2.74%	B
All carriers on JFK–TPA	2,310	76.1%	76 min	4.16%	B−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 2042 quarter by quarter

DL 2042 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 77.4%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 72 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 flights85.6%
Jan–Mar 202687 flights77.4%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights93.2%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.1%

Scale runs 70% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 2042 did best on Saturday at 97.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 78.4%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 2042 runs when it is late

DL 2042 often beats the schedule: 154 of 350 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.

15+ min early154 flights44.0%
Within 15 min153 flights43.7%
15–29 min late16 flights4.6%
30–59 min late11 flights3.1%
1–2 hours late9 flights2.6%
2+ hours late7 flights2.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 350 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

4 of 25 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 22 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 TPA.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 2042

The latest arrival of the period was on 17 March 2026, 7 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).

The latest arrivals of DL 2042 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
17 March 2026	7 hours 9 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
13 November 2025	4 hours 29 minutes	Carrier
28 October 2025	4 hours 22 minutes	Carrier
7 June 2026	3 hours 9 minutes	Carrier
14 December 2025	2 hours 21 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why DL 2042 runs late

Carrier accounts for 52% of the 3,077 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
52%
National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
13%
Extreme weather
2%

33% 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 1,026 minutes out of 3,077, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,077 delay minutes reported on DL 2042.

Cancellations run at 2.50%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 4.6% 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 1,005 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 TPA to JFK (177), but none flew often enough under DL 2042 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to JFK to TPA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 360 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 2042

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2042: 2.50% of its 360 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures