Carrier route record
DLJFK→TPA
Delta Air Lines · New York to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,094
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on JFK to TPA lands a B, 2 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,094 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on JFK to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,063 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.1%
Every carrier on JFK to TPA, 2,301 flights
These figures cover 1,094 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on JFK to TPA
Delta flew 1,094 of the 2,301 flights on JFK to TPA, about 48% of it. Its 79.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.6% to Frontier at 67.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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) | 1,094 | 79.6% | 76 min | 2.65% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,049 | 75.9% | 74 min | 3.91% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 158 | 67.5% | 77 min | 0.63% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on JFK to TPA
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am349 flights88.0%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm20 flights—
- 2pm–5pm345 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm173 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am191 flights79.9%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.0% of the time, against 69.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 349 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on JFK to TPA through the year
July is the worst month at 67.0% on time, 23 points below May, the best at 90.2%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.2%. 25 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 6,039 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,387 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 88.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.65%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
8.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,005 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 82.8% on time across 1,094 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,094 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 TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,094 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 79.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,063 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to TPA, every carrier
- Delta on TPA to JFK, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to TPA75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to TPA67.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.