Carrier route record

DLDFW→JFK

Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York

Flights: 434
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 3

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

Delta on DFW 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 11 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 434 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DFW to JFK record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 409 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.0%

Every carrier on DFW to JFK, 2,009 flights

These figures cover 434 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 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 DFW to JFK

Delta flew 434 of the 2,009 flights on DFW to JFK, about 22% of it. Its 88.8% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.8% to American at 72.3%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	434	88.8%	75 min	4.84%	A−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	171	87.0%	31 min	1.17%	A
American Airlines	1,404	72.3%	72 min	2.64%	C

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on DFW to JFK

DL 45407:1590.2% · 365 flights

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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am148 flights92.1%
8am–11am217 flights88.8%
11am–2pm69 flights81.0%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% 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 81.0% on time against 92.1% for 5am–8am. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 217 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on DFW to JFK through the year

Jul–Sep 2025161 flights86.8%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.4%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 88.8% on time across 434 flights.

Delta on DFW to JFK did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 94.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.6%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 109 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.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 96.6% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 83.9%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 3,460 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
28%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%
Extreme weather
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,460 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 1,442 of the 3,460 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 4.84%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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 stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,391 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.2% on time across 434 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 434 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 DFW to JFK

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 409 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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