Route reliability record
ORD→JAC
Chicago to Jackson
- Flights
- 817
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,162 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 817 ORD to JAC flights, of which American Airlines flew 397 at 69.1% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to JAC: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 72.0% of the time and Thursday flights 77.2%, against 68.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 89 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 802 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
69.1% on time across 397 flights
These figures cover 817 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to JAC
The two carriers here are closely matched: about 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 | 397 | 69.1% | 103 min | 0.50% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 420 | 68.3% | 58 min | 0.95% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 69.1%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 | 68.8% | 69.1% | 0.50% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
| 2. ORD → JACChicago to Jackson | United Airlines | 67.7% | 68.3% | 0.95% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 16 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am536 flights71.2%
- 11am–2pm133 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm148 flights56.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 72.0% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 56.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 536 flights scheduled in it.
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 122 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 77.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.3%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
44% 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 20,000 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 20,020 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 7,093 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 69.8% on time across 818 flights, within about a point 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. 817 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. 817 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 68.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 802 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 31.3% of the 817 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to JAC?
American Airlines leads at 69.1% on time across 397 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 68.3%, a gap of about 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 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 72.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 56.3%, 16 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 JAC69.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to JAC68.3%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DEN to JAC, a related route81.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- American Airlines on-time record69.1%
- United Airlines on-time record68.3%
- 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. 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.