Carrier route record
DLPDX→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Portland to New York
- Flights
- 550
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 60%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PDX to JFK earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 550 flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PDX to JFK record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 137 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 531 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
87.5%
Every carrier on PDX to JFK, 924 flights
These figures cover 550 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 18 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on PDX to JFK
Delta flew 550 of the 924 flights on PDX to JFK, most of the route. Its 91.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 87.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 91.0% to Alaska at 82.5%.
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) | 550 | 91.0% | 72 min | 2.36% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 374 | 82.5% | 60 min | 1.87% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PDX to JFK
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 550 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm69 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am117 flights92.2%
Scale runs 75% 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 83.8% on time against 92.2% for 8pm–5am. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PDX to JFK through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 81.7%. March is the strongest month at 96.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 15 points. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 97.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.8%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on PDX to JFK runs when it is late
Delta on PDX to JFK often beats the schedule: 306 of 531 completed flights, 58%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 48 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early306 flights57.6%
- Within 15 min177 flights33.3%
- 15–29 min late22 flights4.1%
- 30–59 min late13 flights2.4%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.1%
- 2+ hours late7 flights1.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 531 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 45 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 14 still arrived on time. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on PDX to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 May 2026, 7 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in May 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 May 2026 | 7 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 May 2026 | 6 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 July 2026 | 5 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 May 2026 | 4 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 October 2025 | 3 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 3,476 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,195 minutes out of 3,476, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,476 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,748 of the 3,476 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.36% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,454 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 70.3% on time across 550 flights, 21 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 21 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 550 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 PDX to JFK
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 550 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 91.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 531 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to PDX, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to JFK82.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.