Flight number record

DL 798

Delta Air Lines · New York to Phoenix

Route: JFK → PHX
Departs: 17:30
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 798, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 798 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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 798 runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 70 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 350 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.57%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.3%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 798 flies

DL 798 flies JFK to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:30, used on 80 of 364 flights, with 16:59 (50 flights) and 16:55 (45 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:3080 flights22.0%
Departs 16:5950 flights13.7%
Departs 16:5545 flights12.4%

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 17:30 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 798 runs 2 points better at 70.6%. 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 798 next to JFK to PHX

Every carrier on JFK to PHX combined arrived on time 77.9% of the time across 2,972 flights, so DL 798 is 7 points behind it. Delta flew 917 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 73.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 11 points.

DL 798 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 798thin sample	364	70.6%	67 min	3.57%	C−
All Delta Air Lines on JFK–PHX	917	73.9%	61 min	3.27%	C−
All carriers on JFK–PHX	2,972	77.9%	75 min	2.66%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 798 quarter by quarter

DL 798 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.5%, a swing of 20 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 flights73.9%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights57.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 798 did best on Saturday at 76.9% on time and worst on Wednesday at 62.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 798 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 6,876 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
1%

34% 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 2,311 minutes out of 6,876, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,876 delay minutes reported on DL 798.

Cancellations run at 3.57%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% 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.

At 2,153 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 364 flights under DL 798 in the data flew JFK to PHX. 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. 364 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 798

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 798: 3.57% of its 364 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures