Flight number record
DL 353
Delta Air Lines · New York to Los Angeles
- Route
- JFK → LAX
- Departs
- 18:00
- Flights
- 280
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 353, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 353 sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 280 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 353 runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 271 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.21%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 280 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 353 flies
DL 353 flies JFK to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:00, used on 56 of 280 flights, with 18:20 (29 flights) next.
- Departs 18:0056 flights20.0%
- Departs 18:2029 flights10.4%
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 18:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 353 runs 3 points better at 70.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 353 next to JFK to LAX
Every carrier on JFK to LAX combined arrived on time 75.4% of the time across 10,285 flights, so DL 353 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 3,366 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 353thin sample | 280 | 70.5% | 69 min | 3.21% | C− |
| All Delta Air Lines on JFK–LAX | 3,366 | 75.3% | 67 min | 2.55% | B |
| All carriers on JFK–LAX | 10,285 | 75.4% | 78 min | 2.78% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 353 quarter by quarter
DL 353 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 67.1%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 70 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 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202568 flights67.6%
- Jan–Mar 202658 flights79.6%
- Apr–Jun 202686 flights67.1%
- Jul–Sep 202642 flights68.4%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 353 did best on Friday at 76.1% on time and worst on Wednesday at 64.1%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 353 runs when it is late
DL 353 often beats the schedule: 80 of 271 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 80 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early80 flights29.5%
- Within 15 min111 flights41.0%
- 15–29 min late24 flights8.9%
- 30–59 min late29 flights10.7%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights5.5%
- 2+ hours late12 flights4.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 271 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 59 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. In the other direction, 35 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 LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 353
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 June 2026, 4 hours 35 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 26 June 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 December 2025 | 4 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 October 2025 | 4 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 May 2026 | 4 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 353 runs late
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 5,494 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,818 of the 5,494 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,494 delay minutes reported on DL 353.
Cancellations run at 3.21%, 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
10.0% 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.
At 2,475 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including ATL to BZN (14), BZN to ATL (14) and MSP to SMF (4), but none flew often enough under DL 353 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to JFK to LAX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 280 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 353
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 353: 3.21% of its 280 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.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to JFK, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 738 on the same route72.7%
- American Airlines 171 on the same route88.1%
- Delta Air Lines 773 on the same route78.6%
- American Airlines 117 on the same route69.1%
- American Airlines 255 on the same route78.3%
- American Airlines 341 on the same route76.4%
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.