Guide
Spring break flying: March and April at 15 leisure airports
US flights ran 75.7% on time in March and 79.8% in April. At Fort Lauderdale, March managed just 59.7%. How the spring break airports compare, month by month.
Fort Lauderdale's departures arrived on time just 59.7% of the time in March. In April the same airport managed 69.0%. Nationally, March ran 75.7% and April 79.8%, against 77.3% for the whole of September 2025 to August 2026.
Spring break sits across exactly those two months, and the airports that carry it are mostly leisure fields: Florida's beaches and theme parks, the desert, Hawaii, New Orleans, Charleston, San Juan. This guide compares fifteen of them.
What an airport figure covers matters for a round trip. On this site an airport's numbers describe the flights departing it, judged at the destination gate by the DOT's 15-minute rule. Orlando's figures therefore describe the flight home from Orlando, not the flight down. The outbound leg shows up in your home airport's figures and, more precisely, on your route's own page.
One caution comes first, and it matters more here than in most guides. Every monthly figure on this site is one month from one year. In this data, March means March 2026 and April means April 2026. A single storm system parked over Florida for three days can drag a month's figure down several points, and nothing guarantees next March repeats it. Read these as what happened, not as a forecast.
March against April, airport by airport
MarchApril
50.0%90.0%
Figures are on-time percentages. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
The pattern in this data is plain: April beat March at every one of the fifteen.
The size of the gap is what varies.
Florida carried much of it. Orlando went from 70.5% in March to 77.6% in April. Fort Myers went from 71.2% to 81.0%, and Tampa from 76.4% to 82.3%. For Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Fort Myers, March was the worst month of the whole twelve. That is not what a typical Florida year looks like: the state's usual weak season is summer, when afternoon thunderstorms build almost daily. A bad March points to specific events rather than climate, which is exactly why one year of it deserves caution.
One likely contributor at Fort Lauderdale is visible in the airline data. Spirit Airlines, one of the two largest carriers there, ran just 54.2% on time across its whole network in March, its weakest month in the data. An airport's figure is built from its airlines' flights, and when one of the big two has a bad month, the airport does too. The same carrier will not be in next spring's comparison in the same form: Spirit's filings stop in early May 2026, and the data has no Spirit flights in June or July.
Hawaii is the other surprise. Honolulu ran 73.7% in March and Kahului on Maui 73.3%, both well below their usual standard, before recovering to 82.8% and 81.9% in April. The data does not say why. A winter storm arriving from the southwest, against the usual trade winds, is one common cause of a bad week in Hawaii, but a one-month dip of this size can equally come from an airline's own operation, and a single month is too thin to separate the two. One more thing I would keep in mind: from January 2026 the inter-island flights are filed under Alaska's code rather than Hawaiian's, so March 2026 is among the first months of the combined operation in this file. I noticed the switch when the Honolulu to Kahului route split into two carrier files; the data cannot say whether it had anything to do with March.
The desert moved least. Las Vegas ran 78.3% in March and 78.8% in April, almost no change. Phoenix went from 76.8% to 80.8%, roughly the national improvement. Both airports' real trouble comes in July heat and monsoon storms, not in spring.
Orlando (MCO)74.6% overall
Fort Lauderdale (FLL)70.4% overall
Las Vegas (LAS)76.9% overall
Phoenix (PHX)77.9% overall
All panels share one scale, 50% to 90% on time. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
Across the full year the picture is more familiar. Orlando and Fort Lauderdale dip in late winter, in high summer and again in December, which are also the three peaks of Florida leisure travel. Las Vegas and Phoenix run a steady winter and spring before falling away in summer. For a spring break trip, the twelve-month strip is more useful than the annual average, because the annual average folds a Florida summer into a March booking.
The Florida clock
Florida's airports have some of the steepest daily curves in the country, and that curve matters more in spring than at any other time, because the aircraft are full.
5am–8am5pm–8pm
50.0%100.0%
Figures are on-time percentages. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
Orlando's departures between 5am and 8am ran 92.0% on time across the year. Between 5pm and 8pm they ran 62.0%. At Fort Lauderdale the gap between those two windows was 30.2 points, and at Fort Myers 27.2, against 21.3 nationally.
The mechanism is ordinary aircraft rotation made worse by Florida's traffic pattern. Most aircraft leaving Florida in the evening flew in from somewhere else that afternoon, very often from the Northeast or the Midwest, and they likely bring those airports' delays with them. Late-arriving aircraft accounted for 43% of Orlando's delay minutes and 46% of Fort Myers'.
Full aircraft change what a delay costs. In an ordinary week a cancelled evening flight means a seat on tomorrow morning's. In the third week of March, with every flight north sold out, it can mean two days. The on-time rate does not capture that; the load factor does, and in these weeks it is at its annual peak.
Hawaii and the Caribbean
The two Hawaiian fields have some of the flattest days in the data. Honolulu's gap between its early-morning and early-evening departures was just 9.9 points and Kahului's 12.9. Time of day matters much less than date there. Only 3.9% of Honolulu departures ran an hour or more late, against 8.3% nationally.
San Juan ran 75.1% in March and 78.4% in April. Its departures are mostly long flights to Florida and the Northeast, so the risk on the way home likely sits at the arrival end: a late-afternoon arrival into New York or Newark meets the Northeast's evening congestion.
What I would book for spring break
Fly early. At every Florida airport in the chart above, the 5am to 8am window beat the 5pm to 8pm window by a wide margin. At 59.6% for Fort Lauderdale's 5pm to 8pm departures, the evening flight home is the one I would avoid. On a sold-out spring route, the morning flight also leaves the rest of the day to rebook if it is cancelled.
Use the alternate airport when the fare allows. For the flight home, the airport figures are the direct measure. In this data, Tampa beat Orlando in both March (76.4% against 70.5%) and April. Palm Beach beat Fort Lauderdale by a wide margin in March (69.1% against 59.7%) and narrowly in April (71.3% against 69.0%). The South Florida guide covers that trade in more detail.
Book non-stop. A connection adds a second chance for the March weather to catch you, and on spring routes the rebooking queue is long.
If the dates are flexible, lean towards April. It ran better nationally and at every airport here in this data. One year does not make a rule, and a single April storm could reverse it, but nothing in these figures argues for March.
Before a cruise, arrive the day before. Port Canaveral from Orlando, Port Everglades from Fort Lauderdale, PortMiami and Port Tampa Bay all sail on fixed times, and a ship does not wait for a late flight. The flight down is measured on your route's page, not the port airport's; check its March figure, and if it looks anything like the Florida departures above, a same-day arrival is a bet you do not need to make.
Check the specific route. The airport figures cover every departure. Your route page shows your flight's own month and hour pattern, and the booking guide covers what to do when the odds are poor.
Compare the fields: Orlando (MCO) · Tampa (TPA) · Fort Lauderdale (FLL) · Miami (MIA) · Fort Myers (RSW) · Palm Beach (PBI) · Las Vegas (LAS) · Honolulu (HNL) · Compare any US route