Route reliability record
FLL→AUS
Fort Lauderdale to Austin
- Flights
- 1,116
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,105 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in three 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 1,116 FLL to AUS flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 372 at 73.0% on time.
Best time to fly FLL to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 72.6%, against 60.7% for the route overall.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.0% on time across 372 flights.
Key figures
On time
60.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,083 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.0% on time across 372 flights
These figures cover 1,116 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 AUS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 73.0% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 47.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 370 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 372 | 73.0% | 55 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 374 | 61.6% | 70 min | 6.68% | D− |
| JetBlue Airways | 370 | 47.3% | 58 min | 0.81% | F+ |
Spirit Airlines cancels 6.7% 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 Fort Lauderdale to Austin
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 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → AUSMiami to Austin | American Airlines | 72.8% | 73.8% | 1.31% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 2629 19:40 |
| 2. FLL → AUSFort Lauderdale to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 72.8% | 73.0% | 0.27% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. FLL → AUSFort Lauderdale to Austin | Spirit Airlines | 57.5% | 61.6% | 6.68% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. FLL → AUSFort Lauderdale to Austin | JetBlue Airways | 46.9% | 47.3% | 0.81% | 8pm–5am, Tue | — |
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 48 points, against 26 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am48 flights97.9%
- 8am–11am170 flights77.1%
- 11am–2pm256 flights57.9%
- 2pm–5pm125 flights50.0%
- 5pm–8pm94 flights63.4%
- 8pm–5am423 flights53.8%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.9% of the time, against 50.0% for the afternoon window. That is 48 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 423 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 43 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 44.5%. July is the strongest month at 87.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 43 points. March was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%. 23 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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 97.9% on time here. The split is drawn from 26,026 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 34%, carrier at 33% and national airspace system at 31% split the 26,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations run at 2.60%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.0% 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 1,105 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 67.2% on time across 1,116 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,116 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in AUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. July runs 87.7% on time and March 44.5%, a swing of 43 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,083 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to AUS questions
How often is FLL to AUS delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 39.3% of the 1,116 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to AUS?
Southwest Airlines leads at 73.0% on time across 372 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 47.3%, a gap of 26 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 AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 50.0%, 48 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 AUS?
March is the weakest month at 44.5% on time, compared with 87.7% in July. Across the year that is 43 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
- AUS to FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to AUS73.0%
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to AUS61.6%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to AUS47.3%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.1%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record61.6%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record47.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. FLL to AUS and AUS to FLL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed FLL to AUS’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.