Carrier route record
DLPDX→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Portland to New York
- Flights
- 550
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 60%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PDX to JFK earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 550 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PDX to JFK record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 532 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.1%
Every carrier on PDX to JFK, 914 flights
These figures cover 550 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 PDX to JFK
Delta flew 550 of the 914 flights on PDX to JFK, most of the route. Its 86.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.7% to Alaska at 82.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 | 86.7% | 72 min | 2.18% | A |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 82.8% | 49 min | 1.92% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PDX 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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm131 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am55 flights90.7%
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 71.9% on time against 91.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PDX to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 63.8% on time, 33 points below March, the best at 96.8%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 96.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.3%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 5,134 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
41% 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 2,100 minutes out of 5,134, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,134 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 72.0% on time across 550 flights, 15 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 15 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 86.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 532 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 JFK82.8%
- 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 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.