Carrier route record
DLJFK→RSW
Delta Air Lines · New York to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 472
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- 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 RSW earns an A−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 472 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's JFK to RSW record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 84 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 447 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.08%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.8%
Every carrier on JFK to RSW, 1,281 flights
These figures cover 472 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.
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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 85.7% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.7% to JetBlue at 73.2%.
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) | 472 | 85.7% | 71 min | 5.08% | A− |
| JetBlue Airways | 809 | 73.2% | 75 min | 4.82% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on JFK to RSW
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 472 flights.
- 5am–8am251 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am111 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm3 flights—
- 2pm–5pm107 flights82.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 87.0% on time for the 5am–8am window against 82.2% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 251 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on JFK to RSW through the year
February is the weak month at 76.9% on time, against 96.7% in June. 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 90.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.0%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on JFK to RSW runs when it is late
Delta on JFK to RSW often beats the schedule: 199 of 447 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 64 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early199 flights44.5%
- Within 15 min184 flights41.2%
- 15–29 min late26 flights5.8%
- 30–59 min late16 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights2.2%
- 2+ hours late12 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 447 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 38 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. In the other direction, 35 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 RSW.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on JFK to RSW
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 August 2026, 9 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across August, December and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 August 2026 | 9 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 December 2025 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 August 2026 | 4 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 March 2026 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 December 2025 | 3 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 4,540 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
48% 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 2,201 minutes out of 4,540, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,540 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.08%, against 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.4% 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 5.08% 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. 447 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to RSW, every carrier
- Delta on RSW to JFK, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to RSW73.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.