Carrier route record

DLLAX→JFK

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to New York

Flights: 3,358
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 33%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on LAX to JFK lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 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 3,358 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 3,485 at 79.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to JFK record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,279 completed flights

Avg delay

93 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.79%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.1%

Every carrier on LAX to JFK, 10,287 flights

These figures cover 3,358 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

Delta against every carrier on LAX to JFK

Delta flew 3,358 of the 10,287 flights on LAX to JFK, about 33% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to Frontier at 75.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	3,358	81.6%	93 min	1.79%	B
JetBlue Airways	3,485	79.3%	71 min	2.24%	B
American Airlines	3,242	76.7%	112 min	2.19%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	202	75.5%	77 min	0.50%	B+

No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 79.3%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on LAX to JFK

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 16 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am728 flights88.8%
8am–11am701 flights78.5%
11am–2pm637 flights72.9%
2pm–5pm395 flights79.1%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am897 flights85.5%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. 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 72.9% on time against 88.8% 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 897 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on LAX to JFK through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, March worst

October is the best month on the calendar at 86.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 307 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.5%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 63% of the 56,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
63%
National Airspace System
20%
Late-arriving aircraft
15%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, 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 35,000 of the 56,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 55,762 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.79% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.5% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,475 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 77.5% on time across 3,358 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,358 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 LAX to JFK

Put together: take the 5am–8am departure, avoid March if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, JetBlue is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 16 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 3,279 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures