Carrier route record
DLLAX→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to New York
- Flights
- 3,367
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAX to JFK 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 an hour and a half on average. That rests on 3,367 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 3,479 at 77.9% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on LAX to JFK from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,252 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.5%
Every carrier on LAX to JFK, 10,289 flights
These figures cover 3,367 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 LAX to JFK
Delta flew 3,367 of the 10,289 flights on LAX to JFK, about 33% of it. Its 79.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.2% to American at 74.9%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 140 | 81.2% | 56 min | 0.71% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 3,367 | 79.4% | 87 min | 2.61% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 3,479 | 77.9% | 70 min | 3.48% | B− |
| American Airlines | 3,303 | 74.9% | 112 min | 2.66% | C |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LAX to JFK
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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 15 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am728 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am710 flights78.4%
- 11am–2pm637 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm395 flights75.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am897 flights81.6%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 71.4% on time against 86.7% 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
August is the worst month at 65.1% on time, 22 points below October, the best at 86.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 307 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.5%, a spread of 5 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LAX to JFK runs when it is late
Delta on LAX to JFK often beats the schedule: 1,303 of 3,252 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 670 late arrivals split 223 under half an hour, 186 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 261 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early1,303 flights40.1%
- Within 15 min1,279 flights39.3%
- 15–29 min late223 flights6.9%
- 30–59 min late186 flights5.7%
- 1–2 hours late129 flights4.0%
- 2+ hours late132 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 3,252 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
213 of 722 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 30% of them. 161 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LAX to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 June 2026, 19 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 June 2026 | 19 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 December 2025 | 14 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 14 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 2 February 2026 | 13 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 July 2026 | 13 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 63% of the 58,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 37,000 of the 58,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 58,267 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.61%, against 1.89% 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
8.0% 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 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 75.3% on time across 3,366 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 3,367 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: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 86.7% on time and August 65.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,252 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to LAX, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to JFK81.2%
- JetBlue Airways on LAX to JFK77.9%
- American Airlines on LAX to JFK74.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.