Flight number record

DL 863

Delta Air Lines · New York to Salt Lake City

Route: JFK → SLC
Departs: 18:40
Flights: 329
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 863, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 863 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 329 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 863 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 323 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 329 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 863 flies

DL 863 flies JFK to SLC without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:40, used on 121 of 329 flights, with 18:41 (62 flights) and 18:45 (56 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:40121 flights36.8%
Departs 18:4162 flights18.8%
Departs 18:4556 flights17.0%

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 18:40 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 863 runs 3 points better at 71.5%. 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 863 next to JFK to SLC

Every carrier on JFK to SLC combined arrived on time 78.4% of the time across 1,928 flights, so DL 863 is 7 points behind it. Delta flew 1,535 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 10 points.

DL 863 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 863thin sample	329	71.5%	63 min	1.82%	C
All Delta Air Lines on JFK–SLC	1,535	80.8%	64 min	1.63%	B
All carriers on JFK–SLC	1,928	78.4%	65 min	1.82%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 863 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 863 held fairly steady: 73.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 73.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 69.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 70.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights73.3%
Oct–Dec 202560 flights73.3%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights69.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.3%

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 863 did best on Monday at 84.4% on time and worst on Wednesday at 63.8%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 863 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 5,786 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
41%
Carrier
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Extreme weather
0%

41% 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 2,398 minutes out of 5,786, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,786 delay minutes reported on DL 863.

Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 9.6% 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 1,990 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 one other city pair in the data, including OGG to SLC (17), but none flew often enough under DL 863 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to JFK to SLC only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 329 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 863

For a booking, DL 863 is one of the weaker ways to fly JFK to SLC: 7 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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