Route reliability record
JAX→ATL
Jacksonville to Atlanta
- Flights
- 4,018
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 269 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 4,018 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,950 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
86.4% on time across 3,830 flights
These figures cover 4,018 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
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 | 3,830 | 86.4% | 84 min | 1.49% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 188 | 53.6% | 79 min | 2.13% | F |
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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,027 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am743 flights91.5%
- 11am–2pm671 flights85.9%
- 2pm–5pm532 flights79.9%
- 5pm–8pm843 flights73.4%
- 8pm–5am202 flights78.5%
Scale runs 65% 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 73.4% for the evening window. That is 19 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 1,027 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 73.2% on time, 20 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. May was the busiest month here, with 375 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.5%. 12 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 50,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
41% 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 50,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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. The split is drawn from 49,693 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 18,000 of the 50,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.52% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.8% 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 are the an hour and a half kind, 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 75.5% on time across 4,017 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 4,018 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.
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 73.2%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,950 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 seven arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.1% of the 4,018 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is JAX to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
84.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 92.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.4%, 19 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 73.2% on time, compared with 93.1% in September. Across the year that is 20 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
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record53.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.