Route reliability record
FLL→CMH
Fort Lauderdale to Columbus
- Flights
- 837
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 973 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. About 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 837 FLL to CMH flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 432 at 72.0% on time.
Best time to fly FLL to CMH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.7%, against 64.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 129 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 811 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Spirit
72.0% on time across 432 flights
These figures cover 837 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 CMH
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 72.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 58.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 385 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 432 | 72.0% | 62 min | 3.94% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 385 | 58.0% | 52 min | 1.30% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 38.9% | 133 min | 10.00% | F− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.9% 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 Columbus
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 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → CMHMiami to Columbus | Envoy Air | 80.4% | 80.5% | 0.11% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. FLL → CMHFort Lauderdale to Columbus | Spirit Airlines | 69.2% | 72.0% | 3.94% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → CMHFort Lauderdale to Columbus | Southwest Airlines | 57.2% | 58.0% | 1.30% | 8am–11am, 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 35 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am76 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am135 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm38 flights52.8%
- 2pm–5pm192 flights59.9%
- 5pm–8pm157 flights54.2%
- 8pm–5am239 flights58.1%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 52.8% on time against 88.0% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 239 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 77.3% 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 52.6%. 29 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 17,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
46% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 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 16,961 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.87%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 10.9% 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 973 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 77.5% on time across 836 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 837 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 CMH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.87% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 811 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to CMH questions
How often is FLL to CMH delayed?
About 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 35.3% of the 837 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 CMH?
Spirit Airlines leads at 72.0% on time across 432 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 58.0%, a gap of 14 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 CMH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 52.8%, 35 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 CMH?
March is the weakest month at 50.9% on time, compared with 77.3% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- CMH to FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to CMH72.0%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to CMH58.0%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.1%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record72.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record58.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record38.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. FLL to CMH and CMH 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.