Carrier route record

DLFLL→LAX

Delta Air Lines · Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles

Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 16%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on FLL to LAX 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's FLL to LAX record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights

Avg delay

96 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.5%

Every carrier on FLL to LAX, 2,275 flights

These figures cover 363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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

Delta against every carrier on FLL to LAX

Delta flew 363 of the 2,275 flights on FLL to LAX, about 16% of it. Its 85.8% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.8% to Spirit at 61.2%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on FLL to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	363	85.8%	96 min	1.10%	A
JetBlue Airways	1,749	76.0%	58 min	0.80%	B+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	163	61.2%	61 min	1.84%	D

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on FLL to LAX

DL 80007:0585.8% · 363 flights

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 363 flights.

5am–8am218 flights84.5%
8am–11am145 flights87.6%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 87.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

Delta on FLL to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, May worst

October is the best month on the calendar at 93.5% 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 94.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.8%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 4,908 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.

Carrier
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
2%

43% 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 4,908 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 4,908 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 2,341 of the 4,908 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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.

At 2,343 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.3% on time across 363 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 363 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 358 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures