Carrier route record

WNFLL→RDU

Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Raleigh

Flights: 141
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 5

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

Southwest on FLL to RDU draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 141 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on FLL to RDU runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 134 extra late arrivals.

On time

64.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 137 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.3%

Every carrier on FLL to RDU, 1,318 flights

These figures cover 141 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on FLL to RDU

Southwest flew 141 of the 1,318 flights on FLL to RDU, about 11% of it. Its 64.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 74.4% to Southwest at 64.2%. Three 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 RDU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	364	74.4%	104 min	1.10%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	45	66.7%	50 min	0.00%	C+
JetBlue Airways	567	66.2%	64 min	1.41%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	201	66.1%	77 min	4.48%	C−
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	141	64.2%	52 min	2.84%	D

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am5 flights—
8am–11am6 flights—
11am–2pm51 flights78.4%
2pm–5pm53 flights50.0%
5pm–8pm18 flights—
8pm–5am8 flights—

Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 78.4% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 50.0%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 53 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on FLL to RDU through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202548 flights63.8%
Jan–Mar 202646 flights58.1%
Apr–Jun 202630 flights63.3%

Scale runs 50% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 64.2% on time across 141 flights.

Quarter by quarter Southwest on FLL to RDU held fairly steady: 63.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 58.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 63.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 69.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.0%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 2,522 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
1%

50% 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 2,522 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 2,522 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 967 of the 2,522 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.84%, 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

7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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. 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 74.6% on time across 141 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 141 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 Southwest on FLL to RDU

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 50 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 137 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