Carrier route record
DLTPA→JFK
Delta Air Lines · Tampa to New York
- Flights
- 1,094
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on TPA to JFK lands a B, 5 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,094 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's TPA to JFK record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,061 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.2%
Every carrier on TPA to JFK, 2,298 flights
These figures cover 1,094 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on TPA to JFK
Delta flew 1,094 of the 2,298 flights on TPA to JFK, about 48% of it. Its 82.8% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.8% to JetBlue at 77.1%. 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) | 1,094 | 82.8% | 81 min | 2.56% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 158 | 82.1% | 49 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,046 | 77.1% | 74 min | 4.02% | B− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TPA 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 31 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–8am352 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm365 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm16 flights—
- 5pm–8pm296 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am52 flights63.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% on time, against 93.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on TPA to JFK through the year
July is the worst month at 63.2% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 94.4%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%. 8 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 15,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
45% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 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 14,797 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 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.56%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
8.5% 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.
The 1,005 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.6% on time across 1,094 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,094 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 TPA to JFK
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,094 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 82.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,061 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to JFK, every carrier
- Delta on JFK to TPA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to JFK82.1%
- JetBlue Airways on TPA to JFK77.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.