Carrier route record

WNFLL→RDU

Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Raleigh

Flights: 142
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 5

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

Southwest on FLL to RDU draws a D. Roughly one flight in two 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 142 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on FLL to RDU runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 179 extra late arrivals.

On time

59.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 138 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.82%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

67.9%

Every carrier on FLL to RDU, 1,402 flights

These figures cover 142 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on FLL to RDU

Southwest flew 142 of the 1,402 flights on FLL to RDU, about 10% of it. Its 59.4% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 75.0% to Southwest at 59.4%. 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	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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	142	59.4%	52 min	2.82%	D

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.

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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am5 flights—
8am–11am6 flights—
11am–2pm42 flights73.8%
2pm–5pm58 flights49.1%
5pm–8pm23 flights—
8pm–5am8 flights—

Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 73.8% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 49.1%. 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 58 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on FLL to RDU through the year

Jul–Sep 20254 flights—
Oct–Dec 202548 flights63.8%
Jan–Mar 202646 flights58.1%
Apr–Jun 202630 flights63.3%
Jul–Sep 202614 flights—

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 59.4% on time across 142 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 63.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.9%, a spread of 8 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on FLL to RDU runs when it is late

The 56 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.

15+ min early8 flights5.8%
Within 15 min74 flights53.6%
15–29 min late23 flights16.7%
30–59 min late20 flights14.5%
1–2 hours late9 flights6.5%
2+ hours late4 flights2.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 138 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

16 of 68 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 4 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on FLL to RDU

The latest arrival of the period was on 27 December 2025, 4 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on FLL to RDU in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
27 December 2025	4 hours 45 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
15 March 2026	4 hours 1 minute	Late-arriving aircraft
4 April 2026	2 hours 43 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
2 August 2026	2 hours 7 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 February 2026	1 hour 57 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 2,897 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
2%

51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,897 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 2,897 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 986 of the 2,897 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.82%, against 1.89% 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

9.4% 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 76.3% on time across 142 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 142 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 2.82% 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. 138 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures