Carrier route record
DLJFK→PBI
Delta Air Lines · New York to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- 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 PBI lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on JFK to PBI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 690 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on JFK to PBI, 2,205 flights
These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 PBI
Delta flew 729 of the 2,205 flights on JFK to PBI, about 33% of it. Its 80.7% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.7% to JetBlue at 71.0%.
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) | 729 | 80.7% | 68 min | 4.94% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,476 | 71.0% | 72 min | 3.59% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on JFK to PBI
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am236 flights88.3%
- 8am–11am129 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm16 flights—
- 2pm–5pm348 flights73.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
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 88.3% of the time, against 73.7% for the afternoon 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 348 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on JFK to PBI through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 72.1%. June is the strongest month at 87.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 16 points. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.1%. 17 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 9,015 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 3,727 of the 9,015 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,015 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.94%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
7.8% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,028 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.2% on time across 729 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 729 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 PBI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.94% 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. 690 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.