Flight number record

DL 452

Delta Air Lines · Seattle to New York

Route: SEA → JFK
Departs: 21:45
Flights: 361
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 452, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 452 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 40 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

On time

80.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 350 completed flights

Avg delay

39 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.77%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 361 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 452 flies

DL 452 flies SEA to JFK without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:45, used on 76 of 361 flights, with 21:59 (69 flights) and 22:58 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:4576 flights21.1%
Departs 21:5969 flights19.1%
Departs 22:5842 flights11.6%

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 21:45 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 452 runs 10 points better at 80.6%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 452 next to SEA to JFK

Every carrier on SEA to JFK combined arrived on time 75.3% of the time across 2,906 flights, so DL 452 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,337 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 452 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 452thin sample	361	80.6%	39 min	2.77%	B
All Delta Air Lines on SEA–JFK	1,337	79.6%	70 min	2.39%	B
All carriers on SEA–JFK	2,906	75.3%	62 min	2.41%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 452 quarter by quarter

DL 452 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 87.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 71.4%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 90 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 202592 flights71.4%
Oct–Dec 202589 flights85.9%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights87.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights78.7%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 452 did best on Tuesday at 88.5% on time and worst on Friday at 69.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 452 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 2,681 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
7%
Security
1%

41% 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 2,681 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 2,681 delay minutes reported on DL 452.

Cancellations run at 2.77%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 8.1% 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.

At 2,422 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.

Every one of the 361 flights under DL 452 in the data flew SEA to JFK. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 361 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 452

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 452: 2.77% of its 361 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about 40 minutes, 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