Carrier route record
DLJFK→TPA
Delta Air Lines · New York to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,094
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. 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 rests on 1,094 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,060 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.74%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.1%
Every carrier on JFK to TPA, 2,310 flights
These figures cover 1,094 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on JFK to TPA
Delta flew 1,094 of the 2,310 flights on JFK to TPA, about 47% of it. Its 79.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.7% to Frontier at 69.8%. 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 | 79.7% | 69 min | 2.74% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,119 | 73.1% | 79 min | 5.81% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 97 | 69.8% | 103 min | 1.03% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on JFK to TPA
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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am349 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm20 flights—
- 2pm–5pm345 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm136 flights69.1%
- 8pm–5am228 flights75.9%
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 88.5% of the time, against 69.1% for the evening window. That is 19 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
January is the weak month at 71.9% on time, against 90.2% in May. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.7%, a spread of 26 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on JFK to TPA runs when it is late
Delta on JFK to TPA often beats the schedule: 468 of 1,060 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 215 late arrivals split 73 under half an hour, 55 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 87 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early468 flights44.2%
- Within 15 min377 flights35.6%
- 15–29 min late73 flights6.9%
- 30–59 min late55 flights5.2%
- 1–2 hours late50 flights4.7%
- 2+ hours late37 flights3.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,060 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
43 of 190 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 68 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 TPA.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on JFK to TPA
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 March 2026, 7 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 March 2026 | 7 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 October 2025 | 6 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 March 2026 | 4 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 November 2025 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 July 2026 | 4 hours 26 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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,339 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,927 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 88.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.74%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
8.2% 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 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.
The return leg runs 82.3% on time across 1,094 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
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 79.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,060 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 TPA73.1%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.