Route reliability record
FLL→RDU
Fort Lauderdale to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,402
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 680 mi
- Carriers
- 5
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 1,402 FLL to RDU flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly FLL to RDU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.2%, against 67.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 94 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,366 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.21%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
JetBlue
67.6% on time across 668 flights
These figures cover 1,402 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to RDU
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 364 | 75.0% | 92 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 668 | 67.6% | 67 min | 2.40% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 70 | 67.6% | 97 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 158 | 60.4% | 74 min | 5.70% | D− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 142 | 59.4% | 52 min | 2.82% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on FLL to RDU
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Lauderdale to Raleigh
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 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → RDUMiami to Raleigh | American Airlines | 71.1% | 72.1% | 1.44% | 8am–11am, Wed | AA 1566 21:45 |
| 2. FLL → RDUFort Lauderdale to Raleigh | JetBlue Airways | 66.0% | 67.6% | 2.40% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 2626 20:00 |
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 33 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am64 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am50 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm211 flights69.4%
- 2pm–5pm640 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm118 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am319 flights62.5%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 91.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 640 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FLL to RDU 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 RDU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.1%, a wide gap of 32.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.7%
- 8–11am85.1%
- 11am–2pm69.4%
- 2–5pm68.2%
- 5–8pm59.1%
- 8pm–5am62.5%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 88.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 142 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.3%, a spread of 25 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 3%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. Across 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 31,814 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.21% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.2% 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 680 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 77.2% on time across 1,402 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,402 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 RDU 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. October runs 88.9% on time and March 52.7%, a swing of 36 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,366 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to RDU questions
How often is FLL to RDU 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 32.1% of the 1,402 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is FLL to RDU compared with the rest of the country?
67.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FLL to RDU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.1%, 33 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 RDU?
March is the weakest month at 52.7% on time, compared with 88.9% in October. Across the year that is 36 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
- RDU to FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on FLL to RDU75.0%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to RDU67.6%
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to RDU60.4%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to RDU59.4%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.0%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.0%
- FLL to LGA, a related route64.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.0%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record67.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record67.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. FLL to RDU and RDU 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.