Carrier route record

DLJFK→RSW

Delta Air Lines · New York to Fort Myers

Flights: 472
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 37%
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 RSW earns an A−. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 472 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's JFK to RSW record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 450 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.45%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.8%

Every carrier on JFK to RSW, 1,281 flights

These figures cover 472 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 RSW

Delta flew 472 of the 1,281 flights on JFK to RSW, about 37% of it. Its 88.0% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.0% to JetBlue at 73.4%.

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 RSW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	472	88.0%	68 min	4.45%	A−
JetBlue Airways	809	73.4%	73 min	3.58%	C−

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on JFK to RSW

DL 232007:0089.7% · 365 flights

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 12 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–8am304 flights88.7%
8am–11am58 flights94.5%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm107 flights82.2%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 82.2% for the afternoon window. That is 12 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 304 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on JFK to RSW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.July best, February worst

February is the weak month at 76.9% on time, against 96.8% in July. 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 62 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.2%. 4 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 3,676 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%

32% 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 1,191 minutes out of 3,676, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,676 reported delay minutes.

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 1,492 of the 3,676 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 4.45%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,074 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 82.6% on time across 472 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 472 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 RSW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 450 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures