Route reliability record
ATL→FLL
Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 7,371
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 581 mi
- Carriers
- 5
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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 7,371 ATL to FLL flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 4,383 at 73.9% on time.
Best time to fly ATL to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.8%, against 70.7% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 73.9% on time across 4,383 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 7,176 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.46%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
73.9% on time across 4,383 flights
These figures cover 7,371 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to FLL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 73.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,008 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 4,383 | 73.9% | 57 min | 1.78% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 887 | 69.7% | 82 min | 3.38% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 1,092 | 64.5% | 72 min | 4.40% | D− |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,008 | 64.0% | 77 min | 2.48% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to FLL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
- Delta 151210:2582.0% · 365 flights
- Delta 134112:3073.7% · 365 flights
- Delta 148919:5865.2% · 353 flights
- Delta 234515:2565.9% · 351 flights
- Delta 129516:4067.3% · 349 flights
- Delta 133407:2590.8% · 347 flights
- Delta 141313:2572.1% · 332 flights
- JetBlue 179707:0087.2% · 303 flights
- Frontier 217422:4857.6% · 293 flights
- JetBlue 209711:5069.3% · 290 flights
- Delta 109408:0587.6% · 256 flights
- Delta 127109:2584.2% · 256 flights
- Delta 167017:4560.9% · 255 flights
- Delta 122922:4065.9% · 255 flights
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ATL → PBIAtlanta to West Palm Beach | Delta Air Lines | 75.2% | 76.4% | 1.62% | 5am–8am, Wed (route) | DL 1311 08:10 |
| 2. ATL → MIAAtlanta to Miami | American Airlines | 74.2% | 74.8% | 0.77% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. ATL → FLLAtlanta to Fort Lauderdale | Delta Air Lines | 72.6% | 73.9% | 1.78% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 1334 07:25 |
| 4. ATL → MIAAtlanta to Miami | Delta Air Lines | 70.1% | 71.4% | 1.81% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2836 07:30 |
| 5. ATL → FLLAtlanta to Fort Lauderdale | JetBlue Airways | 67.3% | 69.7% | 3.38% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 1797 07:00 |
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 24 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am967 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am1,522 flights79.0%
- 11am–2pm1,161 flights70.9%
- 2pm–5pm1,353 flights66.2%
- 5pm–8pm930 flights60.6%
- 8pm–5am1,438 flights63.1%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 84.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,522 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ATL to FLL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ATL to FLL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.6%, a wide gap of 24.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.7%
- 8–11am79.0%
- 11am–2pm70.9%
- 2–5pm66.2%
- 5–8pm60.6%
- 8pm–5am63.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 781 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.9%, a spread of 21 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 139,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 139,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 139,117 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 50,000 of the 139,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.46% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 581 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.
The return leg runs 71.0% on time across 7,366 flights, within half 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 7,371 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 FLL 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. September runs 84.9% on time and March 56.6%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 7,176 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to FLL questions
How often is ATL to FLL delayed?
Roughly 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 29.3% of the 7,371 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to FLL?
Delta Air Lines leads at 73.9% on time across 4,383 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 64.0%, a gap of 10 points. 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 ATL to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.6%, 24 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 March delays on ATL to FLL?
March is the weakest month at 56.6% on time, compared with 84.9% in September. Across the year that is 28 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
- FLL to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to FLL73.9%
- JetBlue Airways on ATL to FLL69.7%
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to FLL64.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to FLL64.0%
- ATL to LGA, a related route72.3%
- LGA to FLL, a related route67.9%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record73.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record69.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ATL to FLL and FLL to ATL 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.