Carrier route record

UAORD→JAC

United Airlines · Chicago to Jackson

Flights: 420
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 51%
Carriers: 2

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

United on ORD to JAC 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 about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 420 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on ORD to JAC runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 410 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.95%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.7%

Every carrier on ORD to JAC, 817 flights

These figures cover 420 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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

United against every carrier on ORD to JAC

United flew 420 of the 817 flights on ORD to JAC, most of the route. Its 68.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 68.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 69.1% to United at 68.3%.

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 ORD to JAC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	397	69.1%	103 min	0.50%	C+
United Airlines (this page)	420	68.3%	58 min	0.95%	C+

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

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–8am—
8am–11am274 flights74.8%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm146 flights55.7%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 74.8% of the time, against 55.7% for the afternoon 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 274 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on ORD to JAC through the year

Jul–Sep 2025178 flights67.6%
Oct–Dec 202548 flights56.5%
Jan–Mar 2026104 flights71.3%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights72.4%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 68.3% on time across 420 flights.

United on ORD to JAC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 72.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 56.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 105 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 56.9%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 7,509 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
Carrier
25%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
4%

51% 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 7,509 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 7,509 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 74.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.43%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.2% on time across 421 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 420 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.

What to do with this

Booking United on ORD to JAC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 420 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 68.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 410 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