Carrier route record

DLJFK→SLC

Delta Air Lines · New York to Salt Lake City

Flights: 1,536
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 80%
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 SLC lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,536 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on JFK to SLC from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,503 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.95%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

76.4%

Every carrier on JFK to SLC, 1,929 flights

These figures cover 1,536 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on JFK to SLC

Delta flew 1,536 of the 1,929 flights on JFK to SLC, most of the route. Its 78.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.6% to JetBlue at 67.6%.

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 SLC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,536	78.6%	66 min	1.95%	B
JetBlue Airways	393	67.6%	64 min	4.33%	C−

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on JFK to SLC

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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am365 flights87.1%
8am–11am165 flights87.5%
11am–2pm261 flights77.4%
2pm–5pm361 flights76.9%
5pm–8pm384 flights69.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.5% of the time, against 69.1% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 384 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on JFK to SLC through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, August worst

August is the worst month at 64.2% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 87.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.6%, a spread of 8 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Delta on JFK to SLC often beats the schedule: 530 of 1,503 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 322 late arrivals split 121 under half an hour, 94 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 107 an hour or more.

15+ min early530 flights35.3%
Within 15 min651 flights43.3%
15–29 min late121 flights8.1%
30–59 min late94 flights6.3%
1–2 hours late68 flights4.5%
2+ hours late39 flights2.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,503 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

61 of 268 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 115 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 SLC.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on JFK to SLC

The latest arrival of the period was on 9 June 2026, 14 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Delta on JFK to SLC in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
9 June 2026	14 hours 11 minutes	Carrier
16 December 2025	8 hours 15 minutes	Carrier
30 October 2025	6 hours 19 minutes	National Airspace System
20 May 2026	6 hours 16 minutes	Extreme weather
1 January 2026	5 hours 15 minutes	Carrier

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 21,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
4%

39% 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 8,303 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 21,187 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,572 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.

At 1,990 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 1,539 flights, 5 points above 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.

The sample behind these figures is 1,536 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 SLC

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.5% on time and August 64.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,503 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