Route reliability record
FLL→PIT
Fort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 1,107
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 994 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,107 FLL to PIT flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 410 at 69.4% on time.
Best time to fly FLL to PIT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.5%, against 64.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 127 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,075 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Spirit
69.4% on time across 410 flights
These figures cover 1,107 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to PIT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 410 | 69.4% | 70 min | 4.88% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 393 | 64.9% | 61 min | 1.02% | D |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 304 | 57.7% | 81 min | 1.32% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.9% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on FLL to PIT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh
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. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → PITMiami to Pittsburgh | American Airlines | 72.0% | 73.0% | 1.41% | 8am–11am, Wed (route) | — |
| 2. FLL → PITFort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh | Spirit Airlines | 66.0% | 69.4% | 4.88% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. FLL → PITFort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh | Southwest Airlines | 64.2% | 64.9% | 1.02% | 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 36 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am147 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am30 flights—
- 11am–2pm95 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm131 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm181 flights53.1%
- 8pm–5am523 flights57.1%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 89.4% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 523 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FLL to PIT by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On FLL to PIT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 53.1%, a wide gap of 36.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.4%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm80.0%
- 2–5pm66.7%
- 5–8pm53.1%
- 8pm–5am57.1%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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.
May is the best month on the calendar at 80.0% 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.0%, a spread of 25 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 to one. The split is drawn from 26,881 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,309 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.53%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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 actually costs
14.1% 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 994 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 78.8% on time across 1,102 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,107 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PIT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 80.0% on time and March 42.9%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,075 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to PIT questions
How often is FLL to PIT delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 35.4% of the 1,107 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to PIT?
Spirit Airlines leads at 69.4% on time across 410 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 64.9%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FLL to PIT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.1%, 36 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 March delays on FLL to PIT?
March is the weakest month at 42.9% on time, compared with 80.0% in May. Across the year that is 37 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
- PIT to FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to PIT69.4%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to PIT64.9%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to PIT57.7%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.0%
- ORD to PIT, a related route73.6%
- FLL to LGA, a related route64.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record69.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record64.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record57.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. FLL to PIT and PIT to FLL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed FLL to PIT’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.