Carrier route record
DLSLC→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to New York
- Flights
- 1,539
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 80%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SLC to JFK lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,539 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to JFK record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,488 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.3%
Every carrier on SLC to JFK, 1,932 flights
These figures cover 1,539 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SLC to JFK
Delta flew 1,539 of the 1,932 flights on SLC to JFK, most of the route. Its 83.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.2% to JetBlue at 73.9%.
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) | 1,539 | 83.2% | 66 min | 1.95% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 393 | 73.9% | 88 min | 5.09% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SLC to JFK
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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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am78 flights97.4%
- 8am–11am365 flights84.0%
- 11am–2pm62 flights83.1%
- 2pm–5pm301 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm365 flights80.3%
- 8pm–5am368 flights86.4%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.4% of the time, against 78.1% for the afternoon window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 368 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SLC to JFK through the year
August is the worst month at 68.3% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 92.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SLC to JFK runs when it is late
Delta on SLC to JFK often beats the schedule: 730 of 1,488 completed flights, 49%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 250 late arrivals split 89 under half an hour, 69 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 92 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early730 flights49.1%
- Within 15 min508 flights34.1%
- 15–29 min late89 flights6.0%
- 30–59 min late69 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late58 flights3.9%
- 2+ hours late34 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,488 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 315 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 111 still arrived on time. 46 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on SLC to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 April 2026, 13 hours 7 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 April 2026 | 13 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 5 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 5 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 October 2025 | 4 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 May 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,366 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,456 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.2% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,990 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 78.6% on time across 1,536 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,539 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 SLC to JFK
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.4% on time and August 68.3%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to SLC, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on SLC to JFK73.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) 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.