Route reliability record
JAX→ORD
Jacksonville to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,172
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 864 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,172 JAX to ORD flights, of which American Airlines flew 434 at 79.6% on time.
Best time to fly JAX to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.7% of the time and Thursday flights 81.4%, against 76.9% for the route overall.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.6% on time across 434 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,116 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
79.6% on time across 434 flights
These figures cover 2,172 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on JAX to ORD
The three carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 434 | 79.6% | 115 min | 2.53% | B |
| United Airlines | 896 | 78.2% | 92 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| Republic Airways | 365 | 78.0% | 75 min | 4.11% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 259 | 72.3% | 69 min | 0.39% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 217 | 70.2% | 82 min | 2.76% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 4.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Jacksonville to Chicago
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. JAX → ORDJacksonville to Chicago | American Airlines | 77.6% | 79.6% | 2.53% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. JAX → ORDJacksonville to Chicago | United Airlines | 77.5% | 78.2% | 0.89% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 3. JAX → ORDJacksonville to Chicago | Republic Airways | 74.8% | 78.0% | 4.11% | 5am–8am, 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am516 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am242 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm603 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm335 flights65.9%
- 5pm–8pm460 flights61.5%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 89.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 603 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JAX to ORD 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 ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.5%, a wide gap of 28.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.7%
- 8–11am86.7%
- 11am–2pm79.6%
- 2–5pm65.9%
- 5–8pm61.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
August is the worst month at 65.2% on time, 19 points below April, the best at 84.4%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 211 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.7%, a spread of 10 points.
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 43,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
32% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 14,000 minutes out of 43,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 43,340 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 89.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.89% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.69%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 864 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.2% on time across 2,172 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,172 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 ORD 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. April runs 84.4% on time and August 65.2%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,116 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JAX to ORD questions
How often is JAX to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.1% of the 2,172 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on JAX to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 79.6% on time across 434 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 78.0%, a gap of 2 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 JAX to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.5%, 28 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 JAX to ORD?
August is the weakest month at 65.2% on time, compared with 84.4% in April. Across the year that is 19 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
- ORD to JAX — the return legseparate record
- Jacksonville International (JAX) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on JAX to ORD79.6%
- United Airlines on JAX to ORD78.2%
- Republic Airways on JAX to ORD78.0%
- Envoy Air on JAX to ORD72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on JAX to ORD70.2%
- JAX to ATL, a related route83.8%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- JAX to CLT, a related route81.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record79.6%
- United Airlines on-time record78.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. JAX to ORD and ORD 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.