Carrier route record
AADCA→FLL
American Airlines · Washington to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 576
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DCA to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 576 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 1,361 at 68.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DCA to FLL runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 568 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.3%
Every carrier on DCA to FLL, 2,302 flights
These figures cover 576 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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
American against every carrier on DCA to FLL
American flew 576 of the 2,302 flights on DCA to FLL, about 25% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 72.7% to Southwest at 59.9%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 68.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 59.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 365 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 576 | 72.7% | 66 min | 1.39% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,361 | 68.7% | 78 min | 2.42% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 59.9% | 57 min | 1.37% | D |
JetBlue leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am9 flights—
- 8am–11am356 flights77.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm193 flights63.5%
- 5pm–8pm18 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 77.0% of the time, against 63.5% for the afternoon window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DCA to FLL through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 61.7%. July is the strongest month at 93.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. December was the busiest month here, with 71 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 10,151 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 77.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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 899 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 67.1% on time across 576 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 576 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on DCA to FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 576 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 72.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 568 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to FLL, every carrier
- American on FLL to DCA, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on DCA to FLL68.7%
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to FLL59.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.