Route reliability record
FLL→PIT
Fort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 1,109
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 994 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C. 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 1,109 FLL to PIT flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 471 at 70.9% 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 82.4%, against 66.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,079 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Spirit
70.9% on time across 471 flights
These figures cover 1,109 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to PIT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 471 | 70.9% | 69 min | 4.25% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 396 | 67.4% | 57 min | 0.76% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 242 | 57.6% | 81 min | 1.65% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.3% 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.
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 | 70.7% | 71.8% | 1.47% | 8am–11am, Wed (route) | — |
| 2. FLL → PITFort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh | Spirit Airlines | 67.9% | 70.9% | 4.25% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. FLL → PITFort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh | Southwest Airlines | 66.9% | 67.4% | 0.76% | 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 39 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am138 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am34 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm115 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm135 flights67.9%
- 5pm–8pm133 flights50.4%
- 8pm–5am554 flights61.0%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.4% 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 554 flights scheduled in it.
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 82.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.1%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 24,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 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 24,430 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 8,309 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.3% 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 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. 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 79.9% on time across 1,105 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,109 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. 1,079 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 33.3% of the 1,109 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 70.9% on time across 471 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 67.4%, a gap of 4 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 50.4%, 39 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 PIT70.9%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to PIT67.4%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to PIT57.6%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- ORD to PIT, a related route74.9%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record70.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record67.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record57.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.
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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.