Route reliability record

FLL→ATL

Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta

Flights: 7,185
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 581 mi
Carriers: 4

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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 7,185 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 4,268 at 78.9% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.9% on time across 4,268 flights.

On time

71.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 7,013 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.25%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

78.9% on time across 4,268 flights

These figures cover 7,185 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 FLL to ATL

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.9% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 56.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 647 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on FLL to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	4,268	78.9%	74 min	1.66%	B
Frontier Airlines	927	65.0%	85 min	2.80%	C
Spirit Airlines	1,343	60.7%	67 min	3.43%	D−
JetBlue Airways	647	56.9%	64 min	2.94%	D

Spirit Airlines cancels 3.4% 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.

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 32 points, against 22 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1,316 flights89.9%
8am–11am1,159 flights80.1%
11am–2pm1,307 flights75.2%
2pm–5pm967 flights64.6%
5pm–8pm1,627 flights59.3%
8pm–5am809 flights58.3%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 89.9% for the 5am–8am 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 1,627 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, March worst

September is the best month on the calendar at 83.4% 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 782 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.8%. 19 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 144,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

42% 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 144,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 143,501 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 89.9% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.25% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.

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. 11.4% 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 581 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 70.7% on time across 7,189 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 7,185 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.

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 83.4% on time and March 58.7%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 7,013 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

FLL to ATL questions

How often is FLL to ATL delayed?

Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.2% of the 7,185 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on FLL to ATL?

Delta Air Lines leads at 78.9% on time across 4,268 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 56.9%, a gap of 22 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 FLL to ATL?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.3%, 32 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 FLL to ATL?

March is the weakest month at 58.7% on time, compared with 83.4% in September. 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.

Where to go next

Direction matters. FLL to ATL and ATL to FLL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures