Route reliability record
JAN→ATL
Jackson to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,950
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 340 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,950 JAN to ATL flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Best time to fly JAN to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.8%, against 88.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 111 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,916 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
88.4% on time across 1,950 flights
These figures cover 1,950 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 16 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on JAN to ATL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,950 | 88.4% | 87 min | 1.64% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on JAN to ATL
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.
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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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am606 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am281 flights92.8%
- 11am–2pm495 flights86.3%
- 2pm–5pm199 flights87.6%
- 5pm–8pm369 flights81.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.8% of the time, against 81.1% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 606 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JAN to ATL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On JAN to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 81.1%, a wide gap of 11.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.8%
- 8–11am92.8%
- 11am–2pm86.3%
- 2–5pm87.6%
- 5–8pm81.1%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,950 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
August is the worst month at 82.4% on time, 10 points below February, the best at 92.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.4%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 19,249 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,820 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 340 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.9% on time across 1,950 flights, 5 points below 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 1,950 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 ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 81.1% on time against 92.8% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 12 points is the largest single thing you control here. Delta Air Lines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,916 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JAN to ATL questions
How often is JAN to ATL delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.6% of the 1,950 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is JAN to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
88.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JAN to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 81.1%, 12 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 August delays on JAN to ATL?
August is the weakest month at 82.4% on time, compared with 92.5% in February. Across the year that is 10 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
- ATL to JAN — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- JAN to DFW, a related route78.5%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- JAN to HOU, a related route83.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.4%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JAN to ATL and ATL to JAN 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.