Carrier route record

DLJFK→FLL

Delta Air Lines · New York to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 1,614
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 41%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 77.3%, 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.

On time

75.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,545 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.90%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

71.9%

Every carrier on JFK to FLL, 3,907 flights

These figures cover 1,614 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 FLL

Delta flew 1,614 of the 3,907 flights on JFK to FLL, about 41% of it. Its 75.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 75.3% to JetBlue at 69.4%.

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 FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,614	75.3%	66 min	3.90%	B−
JetBlue Airways	2,293	69.4%	71 min	5.36%	C−

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on JFK to FLL

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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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am365 flights86.6%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm364 flights77.9%
2pm–5pm362 flights72.3%
5pm–8pm173 flights71.1%
8pm–5am349 flights66.4%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.6% of the time, against 66.4% for the overnight window. That is 20 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

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, December worst

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 81.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.3%, a spread of 16 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Delta on JFK to FLL often beats the schedule: 616 of 1,545 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 381 late arrivals split 131 under half an hour, 105 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 145 an hour or more.

15+ min early616 flights39.9%
Within 15 min548 flights35.5%
15–29 min late131 flights8.5%
30–59 min late105 flights6.8%
1–2 hours late92 flights6.0%
2+ hours late53 flights3.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,545 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

63 of 313 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 131 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 FLL.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on JFK to FLL

The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 7 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across March, November, September and December, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Delta on JFK to FLL in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
16 March 2026	7 hours 25 minutes	National Airspace System
2 November 2025	6 hours 58 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 September 2025	5 hours 53 minutes	Carrier
16 March 2026	5 hours 52 minutes	National Airspace System
14 December 2025	5 hours 37 minutes	Extreme weather

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.

National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

38% 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 9,553 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 25,299 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 86.6% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.90%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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

9.4% 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 1,069 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.

The return leg runs 74.9% 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 3.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,545 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