Route reliability record
FLL→BDL
Fort Lauderdale to Hartford
- Flights
- 723
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,173 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 723 FLL to BDL flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly FLL to BDL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.2%, against 69.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 708 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
68.3% on time across 672 flights
These figures cover 723 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 BDL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 51 | 86.3% | 138 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 672 | 68.3% | 61 min | 1.79% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on FLL to BDL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am95 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am140 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm66 flights63.6%
- 2pm–5pm51 flights62.0%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights72.6%
- 8pm–5am274 flights60.6%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 87.0% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 274 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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.
December is the weak month at 57.3% on time, against 90.0% in September. 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 80 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 62.3%. 17 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 13,650 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 5,572 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.66% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.41%.
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 1,173 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 71.1% on time across 722 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 723 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BDL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 723 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 69.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 708 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to BDL questions
How often is FLL to BDL 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 30.4% of the 723 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is FLL to BDL compared with the rest of the country?
69.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FLL to BDL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.6%, 26 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 December delays on FLL to BDL?
December is the weakest month at 57.3% on time, compared with 90.0% in September. Across the year that is 33 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
- BDL to FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- ORD to BDL, a related route75.4%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record86.3%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record68.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. FLL to BDL and BDL to FLL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.