Carrier route record
DLJFK→ATL
Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta
- Flights
- 2,456
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 57%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on JFK to ATL lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,456 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 737 at 70.5% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's JFK to ATL record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,406 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on JFK to ATL, 4,272 flights
These figures cover 2,456 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 JFK to ATL
Delta flew 2,456 of the 4,272 flights on JFK to ATL, most of the route. Its 82.2% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.2% to JetBlue at 68.3%.
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) | 2,456 | 82.2% | 83 min | 1.51% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 737 | 70.5% | 74 min | 2.17% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,079 | 68.3% | 71 min | 3.99% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.0% 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
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 17 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am380 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am393 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm519 flights88.3%
- 2pm–5pm472 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm400 flights76.8%
- 8pm–5am292 flights72.3%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.3% of the time, against 72.3% for the overnight window. That is 17 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 519 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 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.5%. 11 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. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 36,000 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%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 16,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 35,596 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.4% 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 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. 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 79.7% on time across 2,448 flights, within 3 points 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 2,456 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. 2,406 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 ATL70.5%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to ATL68.3%
- 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 7.04 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.