Route reliability record
JAC→SLC
Jackson to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 1,218
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 205 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,218 JAC to SLC flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 694 at 89.0% on time.
Best time to fly JAC to SLC: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.2%, against 87.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 98 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,207 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
89.0% on time across 694 flights
These figures cover 1,218 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on JAC to SLC
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 694 | 89.0% | 100 min | 0.72% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 524 | 85.3% | 80 min | 1.15% | A |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 89.0%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Jackson to Salt Lake City
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 → SLCJackson to Salt Lake City | Delta Air Lines | 88.4% | 89.0% | 0.72% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | — |
| 2. JAC → SLCJackson to Salt Lake City | SkyWest Airlines | 84.3% | 85.3% | 1.15% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,218 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights82.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm496 flights90.5%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm357 flights87.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.5% on time, ahead of 5am–8am at 82.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 496 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
February is the weak month at 76.2% on time, against 93.1% in November. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.1%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 52% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 52%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,676 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 7,159 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.4% 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 205 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 88.4% on time across 1,220 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,218 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 SLC 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 93.1% on time and February 76.2%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,207 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JAC to SLC questions
How often is JAC to SLC delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.6% of the 1,218 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 SLC?
Delta Air Lines leads at 89.0% on time across 694 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 85.3%, a gap of 4 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 SLC?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 90.5% on time. The 5am–8am window is the weakest at 82.8%, 8 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 February delays on JAC to SLC?
February is the weakest month at 76.2% on time, compared with 93.1% in November. Across the year that is 17 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
- SLC to JAC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on JAC to SLC89.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on JAC to SLC85.3%
- JAC to DEN, a related route77.1%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- JAC to ORD, a related route69.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.3%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. JAC to SLC and SLC 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.