Carrier route record
WNFLL→DCA
Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Washington
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on FLL to DCA draws a C+. 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 364 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 1,381 at 69.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on FLL to DCA runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
67.8%
Every carrier on FLL to DCA, 2,320 flights
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on FLL to DCA
Southwest flew 364 of the 2,320 flights on FLL to DCA, about 16% of it. Its 65.5% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 69.2% to Southwest at 65.5%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 1,381 | 69.2% | 73 min | 2.97% | C |
| American Airlines | 575 | 65.8% | 82 min | 2.43% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 364 | 65.5% | 60 min | 0.82% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 69.2%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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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 14 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm130 flights72.4%
- 2pm–5pm53 flights62.3%
- 5pm–8pm68 flights61.8%
- 8pm–5am97 flights58.5%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.5% on time, against 72.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 130 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on FLL to DCA through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 74.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 52.9%, a spread of 30 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on FLL to DCA runs when it is late
The 123 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 41 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 36 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early67 flights18.8%
- Within 15 min167 flights46.8%
- 15–29 min late46 flights12.9%
- 30–59 min late41 flights11.5%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights5.0%
- 2+ hours late18 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 357 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 164 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 53 still arrived on time. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on FLL to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 February 2026, 4 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across February, October, December, July and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 February 2026 | 4 hours 49 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 19 October 2025 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 July 2026 | 4 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 September 2025 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
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 7,433 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,433 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 to one. The split is drawn from 7,433 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,532 minutes out of 7,433, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% 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
10.1% 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 899 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 59.5% on time across 365 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 364 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 65.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 357 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to DCA, every carrier
- Southwest on DCA to FLL, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to DCA69.2%
- American Airlines on FLL to DCA65.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.