Route reliability record
JAC→DEN
Jackson to Denver
- Flights
- 1,633
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 406 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,633 JAC to DEN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 500 at 86.9% on time.
Best time to fly JAC to DEN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.9%, against 77.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,601 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.9% on time across 500 flights
These figures cover 1,633 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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
Which airline is most reliable on JAC to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.9% of the time; United Airlines manages 72.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,133 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 500 | 86.9% | 85 min | 2.60% | A |
| United Airlines | 1,133 | 72.9% | 91 min | 0.88% | C+ |
The spread between SkyWest and United is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on JAC to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Jackson to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. JAC → DENJackson to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 84.6% | 86.9% | 2.60% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5543 10:45 |
| 2. JAC → DENJackson to Denver | United Airlines | 72.3% | 72.9% | 0.88% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights83.7%
- 8am–11am348 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm143 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm726 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights78.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 67.6% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 726 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 51.3% on time, 39 points below November, the best at 90.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.0%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Extreme weather
- 12%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 32,792 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.
Cancellations sit at 1.41% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 406 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.6% on time across 1,634 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,633 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 90.0% on time and July 51.3%, a swing of 39 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,601 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JAC to DEN questions
How often is JAC to DEN delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.9% of the 1,633 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on JAC to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.9% on time across 500 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 72.9%, a gap of 14 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JAC to DEN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.6%, 22 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on JAC to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 51.3% on time, compared with 90.0% in November. Across the year that is 39 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to JAC — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on JAC to DEN86.9%
- United Airlines on JAC to DEN72.9%
- JAC to SLC, a related route87.4%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- JAC to ORD, a related route69.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.9%
- United Airlines on-time record72.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. JAC to DEN and DEN to JAC are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.