Route reliability record
SLC→JAC
Salt Lake City to Jackson
- Flights
- 1,220
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 205 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,220 SLC to JAC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 526 at 88.5% on time.
Best time to fly SLC to JAC: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 93.6%, against 88.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 108 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,203 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
88.5% on time across 526 flights
These figures cover 1,220 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
Which airline is most reliable on SLC 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 526 | 88.5% | 67 min | 1.14% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 694 | 88.2% | 71 min | 0.58% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 88.5%, half 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 Salt Lake City 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. SLC → JACSalt Lake City to Jackson | Delta Air Lines | 87.7% | 88.2% | 0.58% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. SLC → JACSalt Lake City to Jackson | SkyWest Airlines | 87.5% | 88.5% | 1.14% | 8pm–5am, 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,220 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am189 flights91.9%
- 11am–2pm319 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm235 flights89.1%
- 5pm–8pm311 flights85.6%
- 8pm–5am166 flights92.1%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 7 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
February is the weak month at 80.0% on time, against 93.7% in August. 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.0%. 8 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. Carrier accounts for 66% of the 9,690 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 6,358 of the 9,690 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,690 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 205 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 87.4% on time across 1,218 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,220 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 JAC 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. August runs 93.7% on time and February 80.0%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,203 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to JAC questions
How often is SLC to JAC delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.6% of the 1,220 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 SLC to JAC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 88.5% on time across 526 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 88.2%, 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 SLC to JAC?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 85.6%, 7 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 February delays on SLC to JAC?
February is the weakest month at 80.0% on time, compared with 93.7% in August. Across the year that is 14 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 SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to JAC88.5%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to JAC88.2%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- DEN to JAC, a related route81.6%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.2%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. SLC to JAC and JAC to SLC 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.