Carrier route record
DLDEN→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Denver to New York
- Flights
- 937
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DEN to JFK earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 937 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DEN to JFK record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 910 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on DEN to JFK, 1,531 flights
These figures cover 937 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 17 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DEN to JFK
Delta flew 937 of the 1,531 flights on DEN to JFK, most of the route. Its 87.7% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.7% to JetBlue at 67.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 937 | 87.7% | 77 min | 2.45% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 49 | 85.7% | 66 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 545 | 67.3% | 106 min | 6.06% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DEN to JFK
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am360 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm362 flights80.3%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am210 flights94.2%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 80.3% on time against 94.2% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DEN to JFK through the year
August is the worst month at 71.7% on time, 23 points below May, the best at 95.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. April was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.6%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DEN to JFK runs when it is late
Delta on DEN to JFK often beats the schedule: 511 of 910 completed flights, 56%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 112 late arrivals split 42 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 47 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early511 flights56.2%
- Within 15 min287 flights31.5%
- 15–29 min late42 flights4.6%
- 30–59 min late23 flights2.5%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late19 flights2.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 910 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 117 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 39 still arrived on time. 34 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DEN to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 September 2025, 8 hours 51 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across September, October, November and February, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 September 2025 | 8 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 October 2025 | 7 hours 19 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 12 November 2025 | 5 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 October 2025 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 February 2026 | 4 hours 57 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 8,659 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,017 of the 8,659 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,659 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.45% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.43%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,626 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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.7% on time across 937 flights, 14 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 937 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 Delta on DEN to JFK
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 937 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 87.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 910 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to DEN, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on DEN to JFK67.3%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.