Carrier route record
WNFLL→AUS
Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Austin
- Flights
- 372
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on FLL to AUS sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four 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 372 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 374 at 61.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on FLL to AUS runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 370 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
60.7%
Every carrier on FLL to AUS, 1,116 flights
These figures cover 372 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on FLL to AUS
Southwest flew 372 of the 1,116 flights on FLL to AUS, about 33% of it. Its 73.0% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 60.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 73.0% to JetBlue at 47.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 61.6% 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 (this page) | 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.
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 51 points, against 14 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–11am108 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm128 flights74.0%
- 2pm–5pm64 flights46.9%
- 5pm–8pm9 flights—
- 8pm–5am15 flights—
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 46.9% for the afternoon window. That is 51 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 128 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on FLL to AUS through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 61.3%. July is the strongest month at 94.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 33 points. December was the busiest month here, with 38 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 5,521 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
47% 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 5,521 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 5,521 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 97.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 62.8% on time across 372 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 372 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 FLL to AUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 372 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 73.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 370 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to AUS, every carrier
- Southwest on AUS to FLL, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to AUS61.6%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to AUS47.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.