Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL738
New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX) · scheduled 3:40 PM – 7:00 PM
How DL738 performs
806 operations, March 2024 – July 2026.
DL738 arrived on time 76.4% of the time, against 79.8% for all JFK → LAX flights, so this departure is 3.4 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 1.9 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 806 operations, March 2024 – July 2026 · If DL738 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL738 is right now
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL738 | 76.4% | 1.61% | -9 min | 8.1% | 806 |
| Delta Air Lines on JFK → LAX | 78.3% | 0.98% | -7 min | 7.4% | 10,287 |
| All JFK → LAX flights | 79.8% | 1.19% | -11 min | 7.6% | 31,151 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · March 2024 – July 2026
Why DL738 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
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL738 on JFK → LAX. 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 DL738 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying DL738 came in 15 or more minutes late on 14% 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, 169 of 797 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 |
|---|---|
| DL738 | 14% |
| 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 DL738’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than 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 LAX?
DL738 pushes back an average of 19.8 minutes late and reaches the gate at LAX an average of 8.7 minutes late. The 11.2 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 30.4 minutes on the taxiways at JFK, 2.6 minutes longer than a typical JFK departure in the same hour.
On arrival at LAX, DL738 spends 11.0 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 LAX 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 LAX. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 25,963 departures from JFK scheduled in the clock hour DL738 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at LAX (595,170 flights), not just DL738’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. DL738 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 25,963 departures from JFK are scheduled in the 3 PM–4 PM hour over the period, against 351,635 across the whole day.
DL738 is scheduled out of JFK at 3:40 PM, in the 3 PM–4 PM bank. Departures from JFK in that hour arrive on time 73.8% of the time against 77.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 3.2 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 DL738 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.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEA→ATL Seattle to Atlanta | July 1, 2023 – June 6, 2024 | 241 | 83.3% |
| MSP→STL Minneapolis to St. Louis | January 8, 2024 – March 9, 2024 | 62 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL738 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 9 min early
Percentiles over 806 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B6123 | JetBlue | 91.0% | 17 min early | 888 |
| AA1 | American Airlines | 89.4% | 17 min early | 1,094 |
| AA3 | American Airlines | 88.3% | 19 min early | 1,077 |
| AA171 | American Airlines | 87.1% | 15 min early | 810 |
| AA255 | American Airlines | 87.0% | 22 min early | 916 |
| AA306 | American Airlines | 83.8% | 16 min early | 1,113 |
| B6723 | JetBlue | 83.4% | 14 min early | 821 |
| DL773 | Delta Air Lines | 82.8% | 8 min early | 1,089 |
| DL738 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 76.4% | 9 min early | 806 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL738 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 806 records of DL738 operating JFK → LAX, 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