Carrier route record
DLDTW→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to New York
- Flights
- 778
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 64%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to JFK lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 778 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to JFK record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 755 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.1%
Every carrier on DTW to JFK, 1,223 flights
These figures cover 778 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 DTW to JFK
Delta flew 778 of the 1,223 flights on DTW to JFK, most of the route. Its 81.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 85.5% to Delta at 81.7%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 445 | 85.5% | 79 min | 3.60% | A− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 778 | 81.7% | 81 min | 2.44% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to JFK
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 27 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–8am8 flights—
- 8am–11am216 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm314 flights79.4%
- 5pm–8pm34 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am206 flights75.0%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.4% of the time, against 66.7% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 314 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to JFK through the year
December is the weak month at 61.9% on time, against 89.8% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.0%. 6 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. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 11,000 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.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 33%Carrier
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,958 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,140 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.51%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.7% 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.
The 509 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 runs 81.1% on time across 776 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 778 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 DTW to JFK
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 778 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 81.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 755 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to DTW, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on DTW to JFK85.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.