Flight number record
DL 496
Delta Air Lines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- JFK → DFW
- Departs
- 17:55
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 496, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 496 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 496 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 341 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.30%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 496 flies
DL 496 flies JFK to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:55, used on 129 of 365 flights, with 18:20 (86 flights) and 17:59 (86 flights) next.
- Departs 17:55129 flights35.3%
- Departs 18:2086 flights23.6%
- Departs 17:5986 flights23.6%
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 17:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 496 runs level with that at 67.7%. 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 496 next to JFK to DFW
Every carrier on JFK to DFW combined arrived on time 75.9% of the time across 1,953 flights, so DL 496 is 8 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 496 | 365 | 67.7% | 97 min | 6.30% | C− |
| All Delta Air Lines on JFK–DFW | 373 | 68.1% | 96 min | 6.43% | C− |
| All carriers on JFK–DFW | 1,953 | 75.9% | 91 min | 3.33% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 496 quarter by quarter
DL 496 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 58.2%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 73 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 flights66.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights63.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights64.4%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights58.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 496 did best on Friday at 73.9% on time and worst on Sunday at 56.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 496 runs when it is late
DL 496 often beats the schedule: 131 of 341 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 110 late arrivals split 30 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 54 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early131 flights38.4%
- Within 15 min100 flights29.3%
- 15–29 min late30 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late26 flights7.6%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights7.3%
- 2+ hours late29 flights8.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 341 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 105 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 28 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 DFW.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 496
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 December 2025, 14 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across December, September and July, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 December 2025 | 14 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 September 2025 | 13 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 September 2025 | 5 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 December 2025 | 4 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 July 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 496 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,888 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,635 delay minutes reported on DL 496.
Cancellations run at 6.30%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
15.8% 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.
The 1,391 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.
Every one of the 365 flights under DL 496 in the data flew JFK to DFW. 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. 365 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 496
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 496: 6.30% of its 365 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to JFK, the return direction
- American Airlines 1953 on the same route69.0%
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.