Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL742
New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX) · scheduled 7:00 AM – 10:30 AM
How DL742 performs
822 operations, January 2024 – July 2026.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 822 operations, January 2024 – July 2026 · If DL742 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL742 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL742 | 79.4% | 1.09% | -6 min | 6.5% | 822 |
| 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 · January 2024 – July 2026
Why DL742 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 DL742 on JFK → LAX. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies DL742 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
DL742 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 6.3 hours on the ground at JFK, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.
The aircraft flying DL742 came in 15 or more minutes late on 22% 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, 482 of 814 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 |
|---|---|
| DL742 | 22% |
| Network, same turn | 29% |
A night on the ground absorbs most of a late arrival, so a late inbound matters far less on a turn this long than on a same-day one.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 6 hours or more, usually overnight. How often DL742’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 January 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves JFK late, does that still matter by the time it reaches LAX?
DL742 pushes back an average of 8.9 minutes late and reaches the gate at LAX an average of 3.5 minutes late. The 5.4 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 28.1 minutes on the taxiways at JFK, 3.2 minutes longer than a typical JFK departure in the same hour.
On arrival at LAX, DL742 spends 12.4 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 1.7 minutes longer than a typical LAX arrival (10.7 min).
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 28,461 departures from JFK scheduled in the clock hour DL742 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 DL742’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves JFK
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL742 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 28,461 departures from JFK are scheduled in the 7 AM–8 AM hour over the period, against 351,635 across the whole day.
DL742 is scheduled out of JFK at 7:00 AM, in the 7 AM–8 AM bank. Departures from JFK in that hour arrive on time 85.9% of the time against 77.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 8.9 points better 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 · January 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does DL742 run worse on particular days?
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 10.5 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes DL742 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| JFK→DTW New York to Detroit | January 10, 2026 – February 7, 2026 | 5 | — |
| BOS→ORD Boston to Chicago | May 7, 2024 – June 6, 2024 | 26 | — |
| LGA→CHS New York to Charleston | April 9, 2024 – May 6, 2024 | 28 | — |
| JFK→SFO New York to San Francisco | October 9, 2023 – January 7, 2024 | 82 | — |
| SFO→JFK San Francisco to New York | November 5, 2023 – December 15, 2023 | 39 | — |
| ATL→SEA Atlanta to Seattle | July 1, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 60 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL742 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.
39 min late
against a median of 6 min early
Percentiles over 822 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 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 |
| DL742 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 79.4% | 6 min early | 822 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL742 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 822 records of DL742 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
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