Flight number record

DL 496

Delta Air Lines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: JFK → DFW
Departs: 17:59
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 496, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 496 sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 496 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

99 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.21%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

15.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 496 flies

DL 496 flies JFK to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 142 of 365 flights, with 18:20 (86 flights) and 17:55 (73 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:59142 flights38.9%
Departs 18:2086 flights23.6%
Departs 17:5573 flights20.0%

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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 496 runs level with that at 69.2%. 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 496 next to JFK to DFW

Every carrier on JFK to DFW combined arrived on time 76.3% of the time across 2,014 flights, so DL 496 is 7 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 12 points.

DL 496 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 496	365	69.2%	99 min	5.21%	C−
All Delta Air Lines on JFK–DFW	434	71.2%	97 min	4.84%	C−
All carriers on JFK–DFW	2,014	76.3%	88 min	2.93%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 Oct–Dec 2025 at 63.5%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 91 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 flights67.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights63.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights64.4%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 496 did best on Saturday at 77.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 60.4%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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.

Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
30%

35% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 10,501 delay minutes reported on DL 496.

Cancellations run at 5.21%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

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: 5.21% 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.

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