Route reliability record
ORD→JAC
Chicago to Jackson
- Flights
- 822
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,162 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 822 ORD to JAC flights, of which American Airlines flew 401 at 68.3% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to JAC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 71.3% of the time and Thursday flights 73.7%, against 67.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 94 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 804 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
68.3% on time across 401 flights
These figures cover 822 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 ORD to JAC
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 401 | 68.3% | 111 min | 1.00% | C |
| United Airlines | 421 | 67.6% | 61 min | 1.19% | C |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 68.3%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Jackson
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. ORD → JACChicago to Jackson | American Airlines | 67.6% | 68.3% | 1.00% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
| 2. ORD → JACChicago to Jackson | United Airlines | 66.8% | 67.6% | 1.19% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am536 flights71.3%
- 11am–2pm139 flights69.3%
- 2pm–5pm147 flights53.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 71.3% of the time, against 53.6% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 536 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to JAC 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 ORD to JAC, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 71.3% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 53.6%, a wide gap of 17.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am71.3%
- 11am–2pm69.3%
- 2–5pm53.6%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 41 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.
December is the weak month at 45.5% on time, against 86.7% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.7%, a spread of 14 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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 22,022 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,772 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.1% 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 1,162 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 runs 70.2% on time across 823 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 822 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in JAC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 822 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 67.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 804 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to JAC questions
How often is ORD to JAC delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.1% of the 822 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 ORD to JAC?
American Airlines leads at 68.3% on time across 401 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 67.6%, a gap of half a point. 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 ORD to JAC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 71.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 53.6%, 18 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 December delays on ORD to JAC?
December is the weakest month at 45.5% on time, compared with 86.7% in May. Across the year that is 41 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
- JAC to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on ORD to JAC68.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to JAC67.6%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DEN to JAC, a related route82.4%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- American Airlines on-time record68.3%
- United Airlines on-time record67.6%
- Flying to ski country: which routes into the mountains run on time
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to JAC and JAC to ORD 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.