Carrier route record
DLSAN→JFK
Delta Air Lines · San Diego to New York
- Flights
- 1,036
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SAN to JFK lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,036 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 727 at 84.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SAN to JFK record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,001 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.8%
Every carrier on SAN to JFK, 2,413 flights
These figures cover 1,036 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 SAN to JFK
Delta flew 1,036 of the 2,413 flights on SAN to JFK, about 43% of it. Its 83.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 84.3% to Delta at 83.5%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 727 | 84.3% | 119 min | 3.30% | B− |
| Alaska Airlines | 650 | 83.7% | 52 min | 1.38% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,036 | 83.5% | 105 min | 2.99% | B |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.3% 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
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 10 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–8am365 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am307 flights86.2%
Scale runs 70% 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 77.3% on time against 87.4% 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SAN to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 75.3% on time, 14 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 90.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.4%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 49%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,407 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,262 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.99%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
6.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 76.6% on time across 1,036 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. 1,036 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 2.99% 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. 1,001 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
- JetBlue Airways on SAN to JFK84.3%
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to JFK83.7%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.