Carrier route record
DLSFO→JFK
Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to New York
- Flights
- 2,229
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SFO to JFK lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,229 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 1,945 at 81.4% on time.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.4% on time across 1,945 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,184 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.1%
Every carrier on SFO to JFK, 6,729 flights
These figures cover 2,229 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 SFO to JFK
Delta flew 2,229 of the 6,729 flights on SFO to JFK, about 33% of it. Its 79.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 81.4% to Alaska at 76.8%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 1,945 | 81.4% | 76 min | 1.95% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,448 | 80.9% | 119 min | 2.90% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 2,229 | 79.9% | 69 min | 1.57% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,107 | 76.8% | 55 min | 1.63% | B |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 81.4%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SFO 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 19 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights89.1%
- 8am–11am368 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm527 flights70.0%
- 2pm–5pm471 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am498 flights82.3%
Scale runs 60% 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 70.0% on time against 89.1% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 527 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SFO to JFK through the year
June is the worst month at 67.7% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 90.3%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 201 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.5%. 10 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 30,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 30,159 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 89.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.57% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.45%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,586 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 71.3% on time across 2,229 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,229 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on SFO to JFK
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 90.3% on time and June 67.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,184 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to SFO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on SFO to JFK81.4%
- American Airlines on SFO to JFK80.9%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to JFK76.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.