Carrier route record
WNFLL→TPA
Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Tampa
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's FLL to TPA record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.8%
Every carrier on FLL to TPA, 1,422 flights
These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on FLL to TPA
Southwest flew 364 of the 1,422 flights on FLL to TPA, about 26% of it. Its 86.5% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 86.5% to JetBlue at 66.1%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 364 | 86.5% | 58 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 826 | 70.3% | 67 min | 2.42% | C |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 232 | 66.1% | 77 min | 0.86% | C+ |
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 23 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–8am55 flights98.2%
- 8am–11am181 flights89.4%
- 11am–2pm80 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm48 flights75.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 98.2% of the time, against 75.0% for the afternoon window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 181 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on FLL to TPA through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 93.3% 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 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.0%. 19 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 52% of the 2,840 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
52% 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 2,840 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 2,840 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 1.81% 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 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 68.5% on time across 364 flights, 18 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 18 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 86.5% 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.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to TPA, every carrier
- Southwest on TPA to FLL, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to TPA70.3%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to TPA66.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.