Carrier route record
AAPHL→FLL
American Airlines · Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,449
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,449 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 579 at 73.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,406 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.0%
Every carrier on PHL to FLL, 3,411 flights
These figures cover 1,449 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 PHL to FLL
American flew 1,449 of the 3,411 flights on PHL to FLL, about 42% of it. Its 75.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.9% to Spirit at 69.5%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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) | 1,449 | 75.9% | 74 min | 2.62% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 579 | 73.1% | 81 min | 1.73% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 674 | 70.1% | 75 min | 2.08% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 709 | 69.5% | 69 min | 5.22% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.2% 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
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 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am263 flights81.2%
- 8am–11am307 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm290 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm155 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm242 flights75.3%
- 8pm–5am192 flights65.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.1% of the time, against 61.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 307 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHL to FLL through the year
August is the worst month at 62.6% on time, 21 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. June was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 72.1%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 25,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 25,181 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 83.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.62%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.6% 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 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. 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 runs 77.6% on time across 1,449 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 1,449 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 August 62.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,406 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 FLL73.1%
- JetBlue Airways on PHL to FLL70.1%
- Spirit Airlines on PHL to FLL69.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.