Carrier route record
DLDFW→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York
- Flights
- 373
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 373 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DFW to JFK record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 126 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 348 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.6%
Every carrier on DFW to JFK, 1,948 flights
These figures cover 373 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DFW to JFK
Delta flew 373 of the 1,948 flights on DFW to JFK, about 19% of it. Its 89.9% on time is 15 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 93.5% to American at 69.4%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 93.5% | 43 min | 0.92% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 373 | 89.9% | 94 min | 6.17% | A− |
| American Airlines | 1,466 | 69.4% | 77 min | 2.66% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DFW to JFK
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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 373 flights.
- 5am–8am86 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am279 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 93.8% on time for the 5am–8am window against 88.5% for 8am–11am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 279 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DFW to JFK through the year
- Jul–Sep 202537 flights94.1%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.4%
- Jul–Sep 202663 flights87.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 89.9% on time across 373 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 75 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 98.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 83.7%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DFW to JFK runs when it is late
Delta on DFW to JFK often beats the schedule: 188 of 348 completed flights, 54%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 35 late arrivals split 4 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early188 flights54.0%
- Within 15 min125 flights35.9%
- 15–29 min late4 flights1.1%
- 30–59 min late16 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 348 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 41 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DFW to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 August 2026, 6 hours 22 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 24 August 2026 | 6 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 November 2025 | 5 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 August 2026 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 December 2025 | 3 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 May 2026 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 3,275 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,275 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,867 of the 3,275 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 6.17%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.1% on time across 373 flights, 22 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 22 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 373 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 6.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 348 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to JFK93.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to JFK69.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.