Route profile
JFK→ATL
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from New York to Atlanta, 760 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 27% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 11,985 flights. How this is calculated
JFK → ATL arrives on time 76.0% of the time; the return trip, ATL → JFK, arrives on time 74.8% of the time.
JFK → ATL spends 37.4 minutes on the ground on a 760-mile trip: 27.0 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at JFK and 10.4 minutes from touchdown to gate at ATL.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why JFK → ATL flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
JFK → ATL cancelled 185 of 11,985 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 65. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 56.8% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 114 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 185 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
105 cancellations, 56.8% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
49 cancellations, 26.5% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
31 cancellations, 16.8% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
185 coded cancellations were recorded on JFK → ATL; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
56 min late
against a median of 7 min early
JFK → ATL has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 7 min early, but the worst tenth are 63 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 11,985 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at ATL after arriving from JFK.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 37% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 23% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 9.5% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 6.2% | Some risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.54% of the time and diverts 0.31% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 11,763 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 56 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 11,985 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
JFK → ATL flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 83.2% of the time, against 68.2% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 15.0 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 84.0% on time from 1,777 flights
- 7 AM: 82.6% on time from 181 flights
- 8 AM: 82.4% on time from 1,481 flights
- 9 AM: 67.4% on time from 367 flights
- 10 AM: 78.4% on time from 439 flights
- 11 AM: 79.1% on time from 643 flights
- 12 PM: 80.6% on time from 895 flights
- 1 PM: 72.5% on time from 999 flights
- 2 PM: 73.9% on time from 477 flights
- 3 PM: 71.1% on time from 1,125 flights
- 4 PM: 76.9% on time from 473 flights
- 5 PM: 73.3% on time from 888 flights
- 6 PM: 62.2% on time from 250 flights
- 7 PM: 75.6% on time from 662 flights
- 8 PM: 62.7% on time from 647 flights
- 9 PM: 68.5% on time from 664 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why JFK → ATL runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
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 JFK → ATL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
Bad weather raises cancellations by a similar amount at both ends of JFK to ATL: 3.5 times the normal rate at JFK and 3.3 times at ATL. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: JFK 6.0% against 1.7%, ATL 3.4% against 1.0%. Flights that did leave JFK in bad weather arrived on time 64.1% of the time, against 79.7% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | JFK | ATL |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 6.0% | 3.4% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.7% | 1.0% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 64.1% | 66.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 79.7% | 80.2% |
| Departures in bad weather | 46,497 | 105,854 |
Delta Air Lines (4.0% cancelled against 6.9% for the other carriers at JFK) and Frontier Airlines (4.6% cancelled against 6.5% for the other carriers at JFK) cancelled fewer departures from JFK in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly worse.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at JFK
All departures from JFK| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 12,657 | 4.0%below the others | 6.9% |
| Frontier Airlines | 672 | 4.6%below the others | 6.5% |
| JetBlue | 14,948 | 6.2%about level | 6.2% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from JFK and ATL, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from JFK on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: JFK (airlines), ATL, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 7,593 | 80.8% | 0.92% | -10 min | 7.8% |
| JetBlue | 3,245 | 67.4% | 2.74% | -2 min | 13.2% |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,147 | 68.4% | 2.27% | -1 min | 11.3% |
Delta Air Lines flew 63.4% of the 11,985 flights listed. JetBlue cancelled 2.74% of its flights here against 0.92% for Delta Air Lines.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 13.4 percentage points more often than JetBlue on this route.
Other ways to fly New York to Atlanta
Airport pairs in the same two city markets, as the DOT defines them.
JFK → ATL is the most reliable pairing for this journey at 76.0% on time, against 75.6% for EWR → ATL.
Flying to ATL from the New York area? Compare JFK, LGA, EWR for ATL, with the same test for what counts as a real difference.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL2286 (6:00 AM) arrived on time 88.6% of the time, 15.8 points more often than DL2190 (7:40 PM) at 72.8%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 13.3 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 72.9%
- Feb: 77.7%
- Mar: 79.8%
- Apr: 81.3%
- May: 73.4%
- Jun: 76.7%
- Jul: 67.4%
- Aug: 76.3%
- Sep: 78.1%
- Oct: 79.6%
- Nov: 80.6%
- Dec: 71.2%
July is historically the weakest month and April the strongest, a spread of 13.9 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 67.0% from 285 flights
- August 2023: 80.8% from 286 flights
- September 2023: 69.8% from 323 flights
- October 2023: 79.9% from 338 flights
- November 2023: 83.5% from 309 flights
- December 2023: 82.7% from 300 flights
- January 2024: 73.6% from 247 flights
- February 2024: 85.2% from 233 flights
- March 2024: 83.6% from 250 flights
- April 2024: 80.6% from 249 flights
- May 2024: 71.5% from 312 flights
- June 2024: 78.9% from 286 flights
- July 2024: 64.1% from 280 flights
- August 2024: 69.8% from 302 flights
- September 2024: 78.4% from 325 flights
- October 2024: 84.9% from 344 flights
- November 2024: 85.1% from 356 flights
- December 2024: 70.0% from 354 flights
- January 2025: 74.8% from 313 flights
- February 2025: 67.6% from 292 flights
- March 2025: 77.9% from 293 flights
- April 2025: 79.3% from 332 flights
- May 2025: 67.3% from 392 flights
- June 2025: 71.2% from 362 flights
- July 2025: 70.5% from 373 flights
- August 2025: 78.1% from 375 flights
- September 2025: 84.5% from 388 flights
- October 2025: 74.7% from 402 flights
- November 2025: 74.2% from 392 flights
- December 2025: 63.2% from 396 flights
- January 2026: 70.7% from 353 flights
- February 2026: 82.0% from 307 flights
- March 2026: 78.5% from 306 flights
- April 2026: 84.1% from 316 flights
- May 2026: 82.7% from 322 flights
- June 2026: 80.5% from 342 flights
- July 2026: 67.0% from 350 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 76.4% against 74.7% in the 12 months before — improving by 1.7 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 11,985 JFK → ATL flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed