Route reliability record
BDL→FLL
Hartford to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 722
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,173 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 722 BDL to FLL flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly BDL to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.9%, against 71.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 65 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 706 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
71.4% on time across 672 flights
These figures cover 722 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 BDL to FLL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 672 | 71.4% | 62 min | 2.08% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 67.3% | 95 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on BDL 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.
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am354 flights82.5%
- 8am–11am20 flights—
- 11am–2pm158 flights58.3%
- 2pm–5pm68 flights64.2%
- 5pm–8pm98 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am24 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 58.3% on time against 82.5% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 354 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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.
January is the weak month at 45.2% on time, against 87.0% in May. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 80 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.0%. 20 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
39% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 13,147 reported delay minutes.
40% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,201 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
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. 10.6% 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 1,173 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 runs 69.6% on time across 723 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 722 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FLL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 722 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 71.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 706 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to FLL questions
How often is BDL 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 28.9% of the 722 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BDL to FLL compared with the rest of the country?
71.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BDL to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 82.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 58.3%, 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 January delays on BDL to FLL?
January is the weakest month at 45.2% on time, compared with 87.0% in May. Across the year that is 42 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 BDL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- BDL to ORD, a related route74.0%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- BDL to ATL, a related route83.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record67.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. BDL to FLL and FLL to BDL 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.