Carrier route record

DLJAX→ATL

Delta Air Lines · Jacksonville to Atlanta

Flights: 3,830
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 95%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on JAX to ATL earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 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 3,830 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's JAX to ATL record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,767 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.49%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.9%

Every carrier on JAX to ATL, 4,018 flights

These figures cover 3,830 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

Delta against every carrier on JAX to ATL

Delta flew 3,830 of the 4,018 flights on JAX to ATL, most of the route. Its 86.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.4% to Frontier at 53.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on JAX to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	3,830	86.4%	84 min	1.49%	A
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	188	53.6%	79 min	2.13%	F

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on JAX to ATL

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 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–2pm653 flights86.1%
2pm–5pm521 flights80.0%
5pm–8pm709 flights78.6%
8pm–5am177 flights79.5%

Scale runs 70% 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 78.6% for the evening window. That is 14 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

Delta on JAX to ATL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 74.0% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 92.9%. 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 345 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.5%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

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 43,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
3%

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 43,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 43,008 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 16,000 of the 43,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.3% 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 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 76.3% on time across 3,829 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,830 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 Delta on JAX to ATL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.9% on time and July 74.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,767 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures