Carrier route record
AAFLL→PHL
American Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 1,449
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on FLL to PHL lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,449 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 675 at 73.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on FLL to PHL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,408 completed flights
Avg delay
114 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on FLL to PHL, 3,410 flights
These figures cover 1,449 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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
American against every carrier on FLL to PHL
American flew 1,449 of the 3,410 flights on FLL to PHL, about 42% of it. Its 77.6% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 77.6% to Frontier at 64.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 73.8% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 577 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,449 | 77.6% | 114 min | 2.76% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 675 | 73.8% | 66 min | 1.78% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 709 | 70.6% | 72 min | 4.80% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 577 | 64.5% | 107 min | 2.60% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.8% 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.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am426 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am220 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm264 flights74.8%
- 2pm–5pm383 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm27 flights—
- 8pm–5am129 flights59.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.5% on time, against 94.2% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 426 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on FLL to PHL through the year
December is the weak month at 71.3% on time, against 86.5% in September. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 171 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.6%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 36,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
48% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 35,768 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 13,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.76%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.4% 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 993 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 runs 75.9% on time across 1,449 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,449 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on FLL to PHL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.5% on time and December 71.3%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,408 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to PHL, every carrier
- American on PHL to FLL, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to PHL73.8%
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to PHL70.6%
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to PHL64.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.