Carrier route record

WNFLL→TPA

Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Tampa

Flights: 364
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 26%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on FLL to TPA earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's FLL to TPA record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

72.2%

Every carrier on FLL to TPA, 1,412 flights

These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on FLL to TPA

Southwest flew 364 of the 1,412 flights on FLL to TPA, about 26% of it. Its 86.8% on time is 15 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 86.8% to JetBlue at 63.6%. One 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 TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	364	86.8%	53 min	0.27%	A+
Spirit Airlines	692	68.8%	69 min	2.89%	C
JetBlue Airwaysthin sample	356	63.6%	95 min	2.81%	D

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

5am–8am56 flights98.2%
8am–11am212 flights87.2%
11am–2pm69 flights78.3%
2pm–5pm27 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 78.3% on time against 98.2% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 212 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on FLL to TPA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.July best, August worst

August is the worst month at 71.0% on time, 23 points below July, the best at 93.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 96.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.0%, a spread of 21 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Southwest on FLL to TPA often beats the schedule: 121 of 363 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 48 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

15+ min early121 flights33.3%
Within 15 min194 flights53.4%
15–29 min late18 flights5.0%
30–59 min late15 flights4.1%
1–2 hours late12 flights3.3%
2+ hours late3 flights0.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 62 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 19 still arrived on time. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on FLL to TPA

The latest arrival of the period was on 20 June 2026, 3 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on FLL to TPA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
20 June 2026	3 hours 57 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
24 May 2026	3 hours	Carrier
5 September 2025	2 hours 50 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
10 September 2025	1 hour 59 minutes	Extreme weather
18 July 2026	1 hour 49 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 2,547 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
7%

51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,547 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 2,547 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 98.2% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 197 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.3% on time across 364 flights, 19 points below 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 19 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 TPA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 364 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 86.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 363 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