Carrier route record

DLJFK→DFW

Delta Air Lines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth

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 JFK to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 373 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on JFK to DFW runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 92 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 348 completed flights

Avg delay

96 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.43%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.9%

Every carrier on JFK to DFW, 1,953 flights

These figures cover 373 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on JFK to DFW

Delta flew 373 of the 1,953 flights on JFK to DFW, about 19% of it. Its 68.1% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 83.3% to Delta at 68.1%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on JFK to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	109	83.3%	84 min	0.92%	B+
American Airlines	1,471	77.2%	89 min	2.72%	B
Delta Air Lines (this page)	373	68.1%	96 min	6.43%	C−

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on JFK to DFW

DL 49617:5567.7% · 365 flights

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's JFK to DFW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 68.1% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Delta on JFK to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 202537 flights69.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights63.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights64.4%
Jul–Sep 202663 flights58.9%

Scale runs 50% to 90%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 68.1% on time across 373 flights.

Delta on JFK to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 58.9%, a swing of 24 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 74.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.2%, a spread of 18 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on JFK to DFW runs when it is late

Delta on JFK to DFW often beats the schedule: 131 of 348 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 111 late arrivals split 30 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 54 an hour or more.

15+ min early131 flights37.6%
Within 15 min106 flights30.5%
15–29 min late30 flights8.6%
30–59 min late27 flights7.8%
1–2 hours late25 flights7.2%
2+ hours late29 flights8.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 348 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

23 of 106 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 28 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on JFK to DFW

The latest arrival of the period was on 1 December 2025, 14 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across December, September and July, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Delta on JFK to DFW in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
1 December 2025	14 hours 39 minutes	Carrier
21 September 2025	13 hours 56 minutes	Carrier
6 September 2025	5 hours 12 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 December 2025	4 hours 53 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
27 July 2026	4 hours 38 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

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 11,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,924 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,671 reported delay minutes.

33% 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 3,513 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 6.43%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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

15.5% 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 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 89.9% on time across 373 flights, 22 points above 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 JFK to DFW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.43% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm 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.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures