Route reliability record
FLL→IAD
Fort Lauderdale to Washington
- Flights
- 761
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 901 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 761 FLL to IAD flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly FLL to IAD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 94.6%, against 86.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 84 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 755 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
86.5% on time across 720 flights
These figures cover 761 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to IAD
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 720 | 86.5% | 71 min | 0.42% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 76.3% | 80 min | 4.88% | B− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Lauderdale to Washington
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FLL → IADFort Lauderdale to Washington | United Airlines | 86.1% | 86.5% | 0.42% | 8am–11am, Tue (route) | — |
| 2. PBI → BWIWest Palm Beach to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 80.2% | 81.3% | 1.38% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. MIA → BWIMiami to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 73.6% | 75.1% | 2.03% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. MIA → DCAMiami to Washington | American Airlines | 73.1% | 74.8% | 2.28% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 2648 19:17 |
| 5. FLL → BWIFort Lauderdale to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 72.7% | 74.2% | 2.08% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 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 761 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am214 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm364 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm4 flights—
- 5pm–8pm179 flights79.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.3% of the time, against 79.9% for the evening window. That is 9 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
February is the weak month at 76.9% on time, against 93.9% in August. 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 84 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.1%. 21 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 7,590 reported delay minutes.
- 31%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,590 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 901 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 82.9% on time across 760 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 761 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 IAD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 761 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 86.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 755 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to IAD questions
How often is FLL to IAD delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.0% of the 761 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is FLL to IAD compared with the rest of the country?
86.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FLL to IAD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 79.9%, 9 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 February delays on FLL to IAD?
February is the weakest month at 76.9% on time, compared with 93.9% in August. Across the year that is 17 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
- IAD to FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- ATL to IAD, a related route76.5%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- United Airlines on-time record86.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. FLL to IAD and IAD 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.