Route reliability record
ORD→FLL
Chicago to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 3,517
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,182 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route 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 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,517 ORD to FLL flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,522 at 76.8% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.0%, against 70.8% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.8% on time across 1,522 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,430 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
76.8% on time across 1,522 flights
These figures cover 3,517 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 ORD to FLL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 76.8% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 61.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 776 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,522 | 76.8% | 66 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 107 | 70.1% | 78 min | 9.35% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 213 | 69.1% | 83 min | 2.35% | C |
| American Airlines | 866 | 68.9% | 74 min | 1.50% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 65.6% | 52 min | 3.03% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 776 | 61.9% | 82 min | 4.90% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.9% 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 ORD 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 Chicago 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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → FLLChicago to Fort Lauderdale | United Airlines | 76.2% | 76.8% | 0.79% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1421 07:00 |
| 2. ORD → MIAChicago to Miami | United Airlines | 73.8% | 74.4% | 0.83% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → PBIChicago to West Palm Beach | United Airlines | 73.4% | 73.7% | 0.38% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. ORD → MIAChicago to Miami | American Airlines | 73.3% | 74.6% | 1.77% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 2984 05:00 |
| 5. MDW → FLLChicago to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 72.5% | 73.6% | 1.43% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 44 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,057 flights80.2%
- 8am–11am711 flights73.6%
- 11am–2pm626 flights71.2%
- 2pm–5pm511 flights63.0%
- 5pm–8pm542 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am70 flights35.8%
Scale runs 25% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 35.8% on time, against 80.2% 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 1,057 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD 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 ORD to FLL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 80.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 35.8%, a wide gap of 44.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am80.2%
- 8–11am73.6%
- 11am–2pm71.2%
- 2–5pm63.0%
- 5–8pm60.5%
- 8pm–5am35.8%
best all US flightsScale 25% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 82.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 440 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.2%, a spread of 13 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 74,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 74,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 73,816 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 80.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.25% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.5% 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 1,182 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 68.7% on time across 3,518 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 3,517 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 82.3% on time and March 57.3%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 3,430 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to FLL questions
How often is ORD to FLL delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.2% of the 3,517 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 ORD to FLL?
United Airlines leads at 76.8% on time across 1,522 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 61.9%, a gap of 15 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 ORD to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 35.8%, 44 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 March delays on ORD to FLL?
March is the weakest month at 57.3% on time, compared with 82.3% in September. Across the year that is 25 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 ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- United Airlines on ORD to FLL76.8%
- JetBlue Airways on ORD to FLL70.1%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to FLL69.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to FLL68.9%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to FLL61.9%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- United Airlines on-time record76.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record70.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record69.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ORD to FLL and FLL to ORD 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.