Is Jetstar reliable?
Ranked 54 of 94 US airlines on on-time record.
112,511 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
74.16%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
2.28%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
—
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
—
Delays it caused itself
Rest was weather, ATC or security
Reading Jetstar’s record
Cancellation is where Jetstar stands out, and not well: it cancelled 2.28% of its flights against a median of 1.21% across the airlines here — 1.9 times the typical rate. Cancellation is also the outcome that costs a traveller a day rather than an hour, and the one that triggers a refund entitlement where delay does not.
Jetstar has been getting worse. Its later months run 5.6 points less punctual than its earlier ones. A drift of that size across a whole network is rarely weather; it more often means frequencies added faster than the operation can absorb them.
The extremes are far apart. On OOL to CBR it arrived on time 90.66% of the time; on BNE to MKY the figure was 52.14%. Same airline, same fleet, same procedures — which is the clearest argument on this site for checking the route rather than the carrier.
Jetstar sits mid-table, which for an airline's punctuality is a better outcome than it sounds.
Each axis is a percentile against the other US airlines in the same period, not an absolute score. Further out is better than most; nearer the centre is worse than most.
Jetstar in five measures
An airline's headline on-time rate hides more than it shows. Two carriers can both arrive on time 75% of the time while one is late by twelve minutes and the other by an hour, or while one is evenly mediocre everywhere and the other is excellent on most routes and dreadful on a few.
These five axes pull those apart. Each is scored against the other US airlines in the same period rather than on an absolute scale, because on-time rates cluster tightly enough that raw numbers would draw every carrier as the same shape.
Same everywhere is the one worth reading twice: it measures how far Jetstar’s on-time rate moves from route to route. A carrier scoring low there has an average propped up by routes you may not be flying.
Jetstar month by month
Its most reliable routes
- OOL → CBR Gold Coast to Canberra 90.66%
- BNE → HBA Brisbane to Hobart (Cambridge) 87.73%
- AYQ → MEL Yulara to Melbourne 86.76%
- ADL → OOL Adelaide to Gold Coast 86.05%
- HBA → BNE Hobart (Cambridge) to Brisbane 85.83%
- CNS → BNE Cairns to Brisbane 85.09%
- MEL → AYQ Melbourne to Yulara 84.71%
- SYD → MCY Sydney (Mascot) to Maroochydore 83.94%
- SYD → BNK Sydney (Mascot) to Ballina 83.76%
- CBR → OOL Canberra to Gold Coast 83.66%
Its worst routes
- BNE → MKY Brisbane to Mackay 52.14%
- MKY → BNE Mackay to Brisbane 52.39%
- PER → BNE Perth to Brisbane 56.12%
- MEL → BNE Melbourne to Brisbane 60.18%
- BNE → MEL Brisbane to Melbourne 62.28%
- BNE → PER Brisbane to Perth 64.14%
- MEL → LST Melbourne to Launceston (Western Junction) 65.38%
- MEL → DRW Melbourne to Darwin 66.26%
- HBA → MEL Hobart (Cambridge) to Melbourne 66.58%
- LST → MEL Launceston (Western Junction) to Melbourne 66.73%
How Jetstar compares
Figures cover March 2025 – August 2026 and are counted from the regulators' own published files. A grade describes the past and is not a prediction about a particular flight, nor a safety rating. How the grade is calculated →