Carrier route record
DLPBI→JFK
Delta Air Lines · West Palm Beach to New York
- Flights
- 667
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PBI to JFK draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 667 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on PBI to JFK runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 634 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on PBI to JFK, 2,051 flights
These figures cover 667 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on PBI to JFK
Delta flew 667 of the 2,051 flights on PBI to JFK, about 33% of it. Its 67.7% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 77.5% to Delta at 67.7%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 1,384 | 77.5% | 83 min | 4.12% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 667 | 67.7% | 101 min | 4.65% | C− |
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–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm334 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm25 flights—
- 8pm–5am308 flights58.2%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 76.7% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 334 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PBI to JFK through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 75.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.0%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on PBI to JFK runs when it is late
When Delta on PBI to JFK is late it tends to be very late: 104 of its 205 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 46 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early157 flights24.8%
- Within 15 min272 flights42.9%
- 15–29 min late45 flights7.1%
- 30–59 min late56 flights8.8%
- 1–2 hours late58 flights9.1%
- 2+ hours late46 flights7.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 634 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
32 of 205 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 32 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 JFK.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on PBI to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 July 2026, 16 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in May 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 July 2026 | 16 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 May 2026 | 15 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 May 2026 | 12 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 May 2026 | 11 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 January 2026 | 10 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 20,720 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,569 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.65%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
16.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,028 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.9% on time across 667 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 667 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 PBI to JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.65% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 634 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PBI to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to PBI, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on PBI to JFK77.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) 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.