Route reliability record
LAS→JFK
Las Vegas to New York
- Flights
- 3,710
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,248 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,710 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,676 at 84.2% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.2% on time across 1,676 flights.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,598 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
84.2% on time across 1,676 flights
These figures cover 3,710 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to JFK
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,676 | 84.2% | 78 min | 2.45% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 202 | 81.5% | 57 min | 0.99% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,373 | 78.6% | 92 min | 2.77% | B |
| American Airlines | 459 | 78.6% | 107 min | 1.74% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 84.2%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am584 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am657 flights84.2%
- 11am–2pm950 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm567 flights78.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am952 flights79.3%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 76.3% on time against 92.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 952 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 64.1% on time, 22 points below May, the best at 86.3%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 344 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.3%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 58,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 58,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 58,476 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 21,000 of the 58,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.62%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.6% 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 are the an hour and a half kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,248 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 runs 79.9% on time across 3,714 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 3,710 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 86.3% on time and July 64.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,598 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to JFK questions
How often is LAS to JFK delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.7% of the 3,710 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to JFK?
Delta Air Lines leads at 84.2% on time across 1,676 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 78.6%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAS to JFK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 76.3%, 16 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on LAS to JFK?
July is the weakest month at 64.1% on time, compared with 86.3% in May. Across the year that is 22 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.5%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record78.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LAS to JFK and JFK to LAS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.