Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL685
New York (JFK) to San Diego (SAN) · scheduled 8:29 PM – 11:42 PM
How DL685 performs
701 operations, March 2024 – July 2026.
DL685 arrived on time 77.3% of the time, against 80.6% for all JFK → SAN flights, so this departure is 3.3 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 4.5 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 701 operations, March 2024 – July 2026 · If DL685 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL685 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL685 | 77.3% | 2.00% | -13 min | 6.4% | 701 |
| Delta Air Lines on JFK → SAN | 81.8% | 1.53% | -14 min | 6.0% | 3,146 |
| All JFK → SAN flights | 80.6% | 1.66% | -11 min | 6.0% | 7,468 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · March 2024 – July 2026
Why DL685 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL685 on JFK → SAN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering March 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies DL685 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying DL685 came in 15 or more minutes late on 18% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into JFK just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 291 of 690 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late |
|---|---|
| DL685 | 18% |
| Network, same turn | 17% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often DL685’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering March 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves JFK late, does that still matter by the time it reaches SAN?
DL685 pushes back an average of 12.9 minutes late and reaches the gate at SAN an average of 2.4 minutes early. The 15.3 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 35.1 minutes on the taxiways at JFK, 3.3 minutes longer than a typical JFK departure in the same hour.
On arrival at SAN, DL685 spends 6.0 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at SAN spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached SAN. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 18,214 departures from JFK scheduled in the clock hour DL685 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at SAN (297,664 flights), not just DL685’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · March 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves JFK
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL685 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 18,214 departures from JFK are scheduled in the 8 PM–9 PM hour over the period, against 351,635 across the whole day.
DL685 is scheduled out of JFK at 8:29 PM, in the 8 PM–9 PM bank. Departures from JFK in that hour arrive on time 67.4% of the time against 77.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 9.6 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from JFK to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · March 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes DL685 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL685 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
46 min late
against a median of 13 min early
Percentiles over 701 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering March 2024 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B6189 | JetBlue | 87.1% | 15 min early | 678 |
| DL683 | Delta Air Lines | 84.0% | 12 min early | 620 |
| DL709 | Delta Air Lines | 81.7% | 15 min early | 654 |
| AS35 | Alaska Airlines | 81.7% | 7 min early | 801 |
| B61189 | JetBlue | 79.6% | 10 min early | 1,006 |
| DL685 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 77.3% | 13 min early | 701 |
| AS25 | Alaska Airlines | 73.4% | 4 min early | 1,117 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL685 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 701 records of DL685 operating JFK → SAN, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed