Route reliability record
CMH→FLL
Columbus to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 836
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 973 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 836 CMH to FLL flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 430 at 78.3% on time.
Best time to fly CMH to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.6%, against 77.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 812 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Spirit
78.3% on time across 430 flights
These figures cover 836 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CMH to FLL
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 430 | 78.3% | 71 min | 4.65% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 386 | 77.5% | 55 min | 0.78% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 57.9% | 132 min | 5.00% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.7% 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 Columbus 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 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CMH → MIAColumbus to Miami | Envoy Air | 81.9% | 82.0% | 0.11% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. CMH → FLLColumbus to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 76.9% | 77.5% | 0.78% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. CMH → FLLColumbus to Fort Lauderdale | Spirit Airlines | 74.7% | 78.3% | 4.65% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 26 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am344 flights88.3%
- 8am–11am98 flights69.2%
- 11am–2pm150 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights62.7%
- 5pm–8pm16 flights—
- 8pm–5am75 flights74.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.3% of the time, against 62.7% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 344 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
April is the best month on the calendar at 88.0% 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.4%. 22 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
35% 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 4,256 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 12,137 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.87%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 973 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 64.7% on time across 837 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 836 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.87% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 812 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CMH to FLL questions
How often is CMH to FLL delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.5% of the 836 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CMH to FLL?
Spirit Airlines leads at 78.3% on time across 430 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 77.5%, a gap of about a point. 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 CMH to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 62.7%, 26 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 CMH to FLL?
March is the weakest month at 63.1% on time, compared with 88.0% in April. Across the year that is 25 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 CMH — the return legseparate record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on CMH to FLL78.3%
- Southwest Airlines on CMH to FLL77.5%
- CMH to ORD, a related route74.5%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- CMH to ATL, a related route85.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record78.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record57.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CMH to FLL and FLL to CMH 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.