Route reliability record
JAX→ATL
Jacksonville to Atlanta
- Flights
- 4,077
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 269 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 4,077 JAX to ATL flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly JAX to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.8%, against 83.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,000 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
85.9% on time across 3,846 flights
These figures cover 4,077 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 JAX 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 | 3,846 | 85.9% | 80 min | 1.64% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 231 | 47.5% | 79 min | 2.60% | F |
Flight by flight
Flights on JAX 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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am974 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am749 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm702 flights85.2%
- 2pm–5pm560 flights80.2%
- 5pm–8pm886 flights70.0%
- 8pm–5am206 flights75.9%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 70.0% for the evening window. That is 24 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 974 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JAX 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 JAX to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.0%, a wide gap of 23.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.5%
- 8–11am90.6%
- 11am–2pm85.2%
- 2–5pm80.2%
- 5–8pm70.0%
- 8pm–5am75.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 71.3% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 93.1%. 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 382 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.4%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 52,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 52,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 51,925 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 269 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 75.1% on time across 4,076 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,077 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: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 93.1% on time and July 71.3%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,000 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JAX to ATL questions
How often is JAX to ATL delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.2% of the 4,077 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is JAX to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
83.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JAX to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.0%, 24 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 JAX to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 71.3% on time, compared with 93.1% in September. Across the year that is 22 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 JAX — the return legseparate record
- Jacksonville International (JAX) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on JAX to ATL85.9%
- Frontier Airlines on JAX to ATL47.5%
- JAX to ORD, a related route76.9%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- JAX to CLT, a related route81.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record47.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. JAX to ATL and ATL to JAX 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.