Route reliability record
JFK→ATL
New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 4,227
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 760 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,227 JFK to ATL flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 2,453 at 81.4% on time.
Best time to fly JFK to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.4%, against 75.5% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.4% on time across 2,453 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,098 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
81.4% on time across 2,453 flights
These figures cover 4,227 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to ATL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.4% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 66.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,113 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,453 | 81.4% | 89 min | 1.67% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 661 | 68.6% | 82 min | 2.27% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,113 | 66.5% | 77 min | 5.48% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 5.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on JFK to ATL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York to Atlanta
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. JFK → ATLNew York to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 80.0% | 81.4% | 1.67% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2286 06:00 |
| 2. HPN → ATLWhite Plains to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 77.5% | 80.1% | 3.21% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 3. LGA → ATLNew York to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 76.3% | 79.1% | 3.55% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 342 06:59 |
| 4. EWR → ATLNewark to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 76.2% | 79.3% | 3.95% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1673 07:05 |
| 5. EWR → ATLNewark to Atlanta | United Airlines | 74.0% | 76.0% | 2.67% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 1287 21:10 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am765 flights81.4%
- 8am–11am746 flights79.6%
- 11am–2pm957 flights77.5%
- 2pm–5pm749 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm582 flights73.2%
- 8pm–5am428 flights66.1%
Scale runs 60% to 85%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.4% of the time, against 66.1% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 957 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JFK to ATL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On JFK to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 66.1%, a wide gap of 15.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.4%
- 8–11am79.6%
- 11am–2pm77.5%
- 2–5pm70.2%
- 5–8pm73.2%
- 8pm–5am66.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 63.2% on time, against 84.5% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 402 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.3%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 83,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 31,000 of the 83,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 83,472 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 81.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.77%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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 actually costs
10.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 760 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 runs 74.6% on time across 4,218 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 4,227 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 84.5% on time and December 63.2%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 4,098 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to ATL questions
How often is JFK to ATL delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.5% of the 4,227 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to ATL?
Delta Air Lines leads at 81.4% on time across 2,453 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 66.5%, a gap of 15 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JFK to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.1%, 15 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on JFK to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 63.2% on time, compared with 84.5% in September. Across the year that is 21 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to ATL81.4%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to ATL68.6%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to ATL66.5%
- JFK to LAX, a related route75.4%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- JFK to SFO, a related route71.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record68.6%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record66.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. JFK to ATL and ATL to JFK are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.