Carrier route record
WNDCA→FLL
Southwest Airlines · Washington to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DCA to FLL draws a D. Roughly one flight in two 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 365 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 575 at 72.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on DCA to FLL runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 178 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
67.7%
Every carrier on DCA to FLL, 2,320 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on DCA to FLL
Southwest flew 365 of the 2,320 flights on DCA to FLL, about 16% of it. Its 59.5% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 72.1% to Southwest at 59.5%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 575 | 72.1% | 67 min | 1.91% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,380 | 68.1% | 80 min | 3.48% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 365 | 59.5% | 64 min | 1.64% | D |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.5% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am19 flights—
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm69 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm134 flights54.1%
- 5pm–8pm135 flights53.8%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.8% on time, against 74.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 135 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DCA to FLL through the year
December is the weak month at 41.9% on time, against 83.3% in March. 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 31 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 73.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 38.8%, a spread of 34 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DCA to FLL runs when it is late
The 145 late arrivals split 42 under half an hour, 56 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 47 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early59 flights16.5%
- Within 15 min154 flights43.0%
- 15–29 min late42 flights11.7%
- 30–59 min late56 flights15.6%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights7.8%
- 2+ hours late19 flights5.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
44 of 182 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. Only 7 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DCA to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 June 2026, 6 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 June 2026 | 6 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 July 2026 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 November 2025 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 August 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 October 2025 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 9,221 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,221 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 to one. The split is drawn from 9,221 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
13.1% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.5% on time across 364 flights, 6 points above 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. 365 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 Southwest on DCA to FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 59.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 358 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to FLL, every carrier
- Southwest on FLL to DCA, the return leg
- American Airlines on DCA to FLL72.1%
- JetBlue Airways on DCA to FLL68.1%
- Southwest 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 7.05 million flight records
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.