Route reliability record
JFK→FLL
New York to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 3,907
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,069 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 3,907 JFK to FLL flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,614 at 75.3% on time.
Best time to fly JFK to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 78.4%, against 71.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,707 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.76%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
75.3% on time across 1,614 flights
These figures cover 3,907 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 JFK to FLL
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,614 | 75.3% | 66 min | 3.90% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 2,293 | 69.4% | 71 min | 5.36% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 5.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on JFK to FLL
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 New York to Fort Lauderdale
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EWR → MIANewark to Miami | American Airlines | 78.6% | 81.3% | 3.29% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1196 05:40 |
| 2. EWR → PBINewark to West Palm Beach | United Airlines | 77.7% | 79.4% | 2.10% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 1771 06:30 |
| 3. JFK → PBINew York to West Palm Beach | Delta Air Lines | 77.1% | 80.9% | 4.65% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2018 07:00 |
| 4. EWR → FLLNewark to Fort Lauderdale | United Airlines | 76.2% | 78.2% | 2.53% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1364 07:00 |
| 5. EWR → MIANewark to Miami | United Airlines | 75.2% | 77.1% | 2.50% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2295 11:31 |
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 25 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am974 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am413 flights72.3%
- 11am–2pm689 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm721 flights66.8%
- 5pm–8pm531 flights62.0%
- 8pm–5am579 flights60.3%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.3% on time, against 85.0% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 974 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JFK to FLL 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 JFK to FLL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 60.3%, a wide gap of 24.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.0%
- 8–11am72.3%
- 11am–2pm76.0%
- 2–5pm66.8%
- 5–8pm62.0%
- 8pm–5am60.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
December is the weak month at 55.6% on time, against 85.9% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 388 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.5%, a spread of 18 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 73,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 73,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 72,522 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 85.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.76%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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 actually costs
11.0% 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 1,069 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 runs 70.0% on time across 3,896 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 3,907 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 FLL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.76% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 3,707 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to FLL questions
How often is JFK to FLL delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.1% of the 3,907 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to FLL?
Delta Air Lines leads at 75.3% on time across 1,614 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 69.4%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JFK to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.3%, 25 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 December delays on JFK to FLL?
December is the weakest month at 55.6% on time, compared with 85.9% in May. Across the year that is 30 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
- FLL to JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to FLL75.3%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to FLL69.4%
- JFK to LAX, a related route75.4%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- JFK to SFO, a related route71.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.3%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record69.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JFK to FLL and FLL to JFK 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.