Route reliability record
AUS→FLL
Austin to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,116
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,105 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,116 AUS to FLL flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 369 at 71.0% on time.
Best time to fly AUS to FLL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.0%, against 67.2% for the route overall.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.0% on time across 369 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,087 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
71.0% on time across 369 flights
These figures cover 1,116 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to FLL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 71.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 62.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 372 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 369 | 71.0% | 77 min | 0.81% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 375 | 68.1% | 65 min | 5.33% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 372 | 62.8% | 47 min | 0.54% | D+ |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.3% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin 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. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AUS → MIAAustin to Miami | American Airlines | 78.7% | 79.8% | 1.38% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. AUS → FLLAustin to Fort Lauderdale | JetBlue Airways | 70.4% | 71.0% | 0.81% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. AUS → FLLAustin to Fort Lauderdale | Spirit Airlines | 64.5% | 68.1% | 5.33% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. AUS → FLLAustin to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 62.5% | 62.8% | 0.54% | 11am–2pm, 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 49 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am534 flights80.4%
- 8am–11am63 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm162 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm231 flights43.2%
- 5pm–8pm99 flights33.3%
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 25% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 33.3% on time, against 82.3% for the 8am–11am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 534 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 41 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 88.2% 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.7%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 21,929 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 8,324 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% 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 1,105 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 60.7% on time across 1,116 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,116 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 88.2% on time and March 47.1%, a swing of 41 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,087 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to FLL questions
How often is AUS to FLL delayed?
About 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 32.8% of the 1,116 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to FLL?
JetBlue Airways leads at 71.0% on time across 369 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 62.8%, a gap of 8 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 AUS to FLL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 33.3%, 49 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 AUS to FLL?
March is the weakest month at 47.1% on time, compared with 88.2% in September. Across the year that is 41 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 AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on AUS to FLL71.0%
- Spirit Airlines on AUS to FLL68.1%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to FLL62.8%
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.4%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- AUS to DFW, a related route73.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record68.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record62.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. AUS to FLL and FLL to AUS 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.