Flight number record
DL 991
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to New York
- Route
- LAX → JFK
- Departs
- 13:15
- Flights
- 323
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 991, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 991 lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 323 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 315 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.17%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
9.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 323 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 991 flies
DL 991 flies LAX to JFK without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:15, used on 53 of 323 flights, with 13:30 (41 flights) and 16:00 (40 flights) next.
- Departs 13:1553 flights16.4%
- Departs 13:3041 flights12.7%
- Departs 16:0040 flights12.4%
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 13:15 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 991 runs level with that at 76.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 991 next to LAX to JFK
Every carrier on LAX to JFK combined arrived on time 77.5% of the time across 10,289 flights, so DL 991 is about level with it. Delta flew 3,367 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 991thin sample | 323 | 76.5% | 100 min | 2.17% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–JFK | 3,367 | 79.4% | 87 min | 2.61% | B |
| All carriers on LAX–JFK | 10,289 | 77.5% | 90 min | 2.90% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 991 quarter by quarter
DL 991 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 84.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 65.2%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 65 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 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 202588 flights81.6%
- Jan–Mar 202683 flights67.5%
- Apr–Jun 202674 flights84.7%
- Jul–Sep 202648 flights65.2%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 991 did best on Tuesday at 89.6% on time and worst on Monday at 67.4%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 991 runs when it is late
DL 991 often beats the schedule: 112 of 315 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 74 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early112 flights35.6%
- Within 15 min129 flights41.0%
- 15–29 min late22 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late22 flights7.0%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights4.8%
- 2+ hours late15 flights4.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 315 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 85 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 29 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 18 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 JFK.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 991
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 June 2026, 19 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 June 2026 | 19 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 14 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 June 2026 | 5 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 January 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 January 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 991 runs late
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 7,378 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,612 of the 7,378 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,378 delay minutes reported on DL 991.
Cancellations sit at 2.17% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
9.5% 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.
At 2,475 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 323 flights under DL 991 in the data flew LAX 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. 323 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 991
For a booking, read DL 991 as 76.5% on time with 2.17% cancelled over 323 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to JFK, every carrier and departure
- JFK to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 934 on the same route86.7%
- Delta Air Lines 960 on the same route83.1%
- American Airlines 118 on the same route83.6%
- American Airlines 307 on the same route74.6%
- Delta Air Lines 958 on the same route82.4%
- American Airlines 274 on the same route57.9%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) 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
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.