Carrier route record
DLSAN→JFK
Delta Air Lines · San Diego to New York
- Flights
- 1,046
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SAN to JFK carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, more than four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,046 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 647 at 83.4% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SAN to JFK record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,000 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.6%
Every carrier on SAN to JFK, 2,417 flights
These figures cover 1,046 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 SAN to JFK
Delta flew 1,046 of the 2,417 flights on SAN to JFK, about 43% of it. Its 82.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 83.4% to JetBlue at 81.7%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 647 | 83.4% | 57 min | 1.70% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,046 | 82.8% | 111 min | 3.35% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 724 | 81.7% | 107 min | 4.56% | B− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.6% 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 SAN 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 1,046 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights86.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am317 flights85.1%
Scale runs 70% 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 77.0% on time against 86.6% 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SAN to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 73.8% on time, 16 points below September, the best at 89.4%. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SAN to JFK runs when it is late
Delta on SAN to JFK often beats the schedule: 396 of 1,000 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 172 late arrivals split 61 under half an hour, 36 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 75 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early396 flights39.6%
- Within 15 min432 flights43.2%
- 15–29 min late61 flights6.1%
- 30–59 min late36 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late37 flights3.7%
- 2+ hours late38 flights3.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,000 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 186 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 69 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 55 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 SAN to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 June 2026, 14 hours 34 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 June 2026 | 14 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 October 2025 | 14 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 July 2026 | 11 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 October 2025 | 11 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 July 2026 | 10 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,930 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,122 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.35%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
7.5% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,446 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 75.5% on time across 1,046 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,046 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 SAN to JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.35% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,000 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to SAN, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to JFK83.4%
- JetBlue Airways on SAN to JFK81.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.