Carrier route record
DLDEN→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Denver to New York
- Flights
- 978
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 62%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 978 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DEN to JFK record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 94 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 952 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.0%
Every carrier on DEN to JFK, 1,572 flights
These figures cover 978 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 19 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DEN to JFK
Delta flew 978 of the 1,572 flights on DEN to JFK, most of the route. Its 87.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.0% to JetBlue at 69.7%. 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) | 978 | 87.0% | 80 min | 2.45% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 49 | 85.7% | 66 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 545 | 69.7% | 98 min | 3.67% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DEN to JFK
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 978 flights.
- 5am–8am360 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm361 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am252 flights90.2%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 81.8% on time against 90.2% 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 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DEN to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 68.2% on time, 27 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.6%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 9,935 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 46%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,616 of the 9,935 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,935 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 73.2% on time across 978 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. 978 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. 978 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 87.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 952 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 JFK69.7%
- 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 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.