Carrier route record
DLJFK→FLL
Delta Air Lines · New York to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,614
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on JFK to FLL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,614 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on JFK to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,552 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on JFK to FLL, 3,884 flights
These figures cover 1,614 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on JFK to FLL
Delta flew 1,614 of the 3,884 flights on JFK to FLL, about 42% of it. Its 76.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 76.5% to JetBlue at 70.0%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,614 | 76.5% | 69 min | 3.47% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 2,270 | 70.0% | 69 min | 3.96% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on JFK to FLL
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 21 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–8am365 flights88.1%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm364 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm362 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm173 flights71.1%
- 8pm–5am349 flights67.5%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.1% of the time, against 67.5% for the overnight window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on JFK to FLL through the year
December is the weak month at 60.6% on time, against 87.3% in May. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.0%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%National Airspace System
- 33%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 8,412 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 25,072 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 88.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
8.8% 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 1,069 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 76.4% on time across 1,615 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,614 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 FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,552 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to FLL, every carrier
- Delta on FLL to JFK, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to FLL70.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.