Carrier route record
AAPHL→FLL
American Airlines · Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,628
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 45%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHL to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,628 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 659 at 72.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate American on PHL to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,578 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on PHL to FLL, 3,588 flights
These figures cover 1,628 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on PHL to FLL
American flew 1,628 of the 3,588 flights on PHL to FLL, about 45% of it. Its 75.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.4% to Spirit at 69.9%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,628 | 75.4% | 78 min | 2.70% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 659 | 72.4% | 82 min | 2.28% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 730 | 70.9% | 80 min | 3.29% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 571 | 69.9% | 69 min | 5.95% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 6.0% 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
American flight numbers on PHL to FLL
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 22 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am325 flights82.4%
- 8am–11am308 flights84.2%
- 11am–2pm293 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm214 flights62.1%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights67.3%
- 8pm–5am131 flights80.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.2% of the time, against 62.1% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 357 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHL to FLL through the year
July is the worst month at 65.7% on time, 18 points below January, the best at 84.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.0%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on PHL to FLL runs when it is late
American on PHL to FLL often beats the schedule: 621 of 1,578 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 388 late arrivals split 98 under half an hour, 111 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 179 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early621 flights39.4%
- Within 15 min569 flights36.1%
- 15–29 min late98 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late111 flights7.0%
- 1–2 hours late100 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late79 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,578 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
88 of 385 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 91 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FLL.
The worst days
Worst days for American on PHL to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 December 2025, 12 hours 16 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.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 December 2025 | 12 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 9 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 July 2026 | 7 hours 24 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 26 January 2026 | 6 hours 22 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 12 July 2026 | 5 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 30,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 30,072 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 84.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.70%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
11.3% 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 993 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 77.4% on time across 1,628 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 1,628 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on PHL to FLL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 84.0% on time and July 65.7%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,578 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to FLL, every carrier
- American on FLL to PHL, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to FLL72.4%
- JetBlue Airways on PHL to FLL70.9%
- Spirit Airlines on PHL to FLL69.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.