Carrier route record
DLJFK→ATL
Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,453
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on JFK to ATL lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,453 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 661 at 68.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's JFK to ATL record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,402 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.5%
Every carrier on JFK to ATL, 4,227 flights
These figures cover 2,453 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on JFK to ATL
Delta flew 2,453 of the 4,227 flights on JFK to ATL, most of the route. Its 81.4% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.4% to JetBlue at 66.5%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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
Delta flight numbers on JFK to ATL
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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 15 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am379 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am393 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm524 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm471 flights75.5%
- 5pm–8pm457 flights75.8%
- 8pm–5am229 flights74.8%
Scale runs 65% to 95%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 74.8% 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 524 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on JFK to ATL through the year
December is the weak month at 70.8% on time, against 91.2% in April. 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 220 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.3%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on JFK to ATL runs when it is late
Delta on JFK to ATL often beats the schedule: 1,095 of 2,402 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 447 late arrivals split 121 under half an hour, 129 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 197 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early1,095 flights45.6%
- Within 15 min860 flights35.8%
- 15–29 min late121 flights5.0%
- 30–59 min late129 flights5.4%
- 1–2 hours late104 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late93 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,402 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 492 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 158 still arrived on time. 113 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on JFK to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 October 2025, 19 hours 51 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 30 October 2025 | 19 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 July 2026 | 19 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 17 hours 59 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 23 March 2026 | 10 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 March 2026 | 7 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 40,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
34% 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 14,000 minutes out of 40,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 39,793 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 17,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.67% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.41%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.4% on time across 2,445 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,453 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on JFK to ATL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 91.2% on time and December 70.8%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,402 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to ATL, every carrier
- Delta on ATL to JFK, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to ATL68.6%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to ATL66.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.