Carrier route record
DLFLL→CVG
Delta Air Lines · Fort Lauderdale to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 525
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 54%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on FLL to CVG sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 525 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on FLL to CVG runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 518 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on FLL to CVG, 975 flights
These figures cover 525 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on FLL to CVG
Delta flew 525 of the 975 flights on FLL to CVG, most of the route. Its 71.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 71.8% to Frontier at 64.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 525 | 71.8% | 84 min | 0.95% | C+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 257 | 71.5% | 100 min | 0.39% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 193 | 64.6% | 96 min | 2.07% | D |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on FLL to CVG
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 525 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am24 flights—
- 11am–2pm203 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm29 flights—
- 5pm–8pm269 flights68.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 77.4% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 68.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 269 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on FLL to CVG through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 52.8%. January is the strongest month at 83.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 31 points. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 58.7%, a spread of 25 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on FLL to CVG runs when it is late
Delta on FLL to CVG often beats the schedule: 143 of 518 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 146 late arrivals split 44 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 62 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early143 flights27.6%
- Within 15 min229 flights44.2%
- 15–29 min late44 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late40 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late34 flights6.6%
- 2+ hours late28 flights5.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 518 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
22 of 134 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 34 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at CVG.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on FLL to CVG
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 18 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 18 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 July 2026 | 13 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 June 2026 | 6 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 March 2026 | 5 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 February 2026 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 to one. The split is drawn from 12,306 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 932 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.0% on time across 525 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 525 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 Delta on FLL to CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 525 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 71.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 518 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to CVG, every carrier
- Delta on CVG to FLL, the return leg
- Allegiant Air on FLL to CVG71.5%
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to CVG64.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.