Carrier route record
AALGA→FLL
American Airlines · New York to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 481
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LGA to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 481 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,597 at 71.4% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.4% on time across 1,597 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 461 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.8%
Every carrier on LGA to FLL, 4,655 flights
These figures cover 481 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on LGA to FLL
American flew 481 of the 4,655 flights on LGA to FLL, about 10% of it. Its 70.3% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 71.4% to JetBlue at 65.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 71.4% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,596 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,597 | 71.4% | 67 min | 3.76% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 481 | 70.3% | 78 min | 3.95% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 981 | 69.7% | 81 min | 6.63% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,596 | 65.3% | 85 min | 3.63% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 6.6% 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.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am237 flights76.0%
- 11am–2pm68 flights62.7%
- 2pm–5pm175 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 62.7% on time against 76.0% for 8am–11am. 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 237 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LGA to FLL through the year
December is the weak month at 63.8% on time, against 83.6% in January. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 72 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.2%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 10,697 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 76.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.95%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,076 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 55.5% on time across 481 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 481 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 American on LGA to FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 461 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to FLL, every carrier
- American on FLL to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to FLL71.4%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to FLL69.7%
- JetBlue Airways on LGA to FLL65.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.