Carrier route record

DLFLL→ATL

Delta Air Lines · Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta

Flights: 4,268
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 59%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on FLL to ATL lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 4,268 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 927 at 65.0% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on FLL to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,190 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.66%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.8%

Every carrier on FLL to ATL, 7,185 flights

These figures cover 4,268 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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

Delta against every carrier on FLL to ATL

Delta flew 4,268 of the 7,185 flights on FLL to ATL, most of the route. Its 78.9% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.9% to JetBlue at 56.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 65.0% 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 (this page)	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.

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on FLL to ATL

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am903 flights94.5%
8am–11am585 flights87.5%
11am–2pm1,034 flights78.2%
2pm–5pm640 flights71.3%
5pm–8pm932 flights65.2%
8pm–5am174 flights74.1%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 65.2% for the evening window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 1,034 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on FLL to ATL through the year

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

July is the worst month at 66.9% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 86.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 422 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.4%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 65,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
5%

45% 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 65,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 65,261 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 94.5% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.66% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.5% on time across 4,272 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 4,268 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 Delta on FLL to ATL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.9% on time and July 66.9%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,190 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures