Route reliability record
RDU→FLL
Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,318
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 680 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,318 RDU to FLL flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly RDU to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.6%, against 78.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,285 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
82.6% on time across 567 flights
These figures cover 1,318 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on RDU to FLL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 567 | 82.6% | 77 min | 1.76% | B |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 364 | 78.8% | 65 min | 1.10% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 74.6% | 63 min | 2.13% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 71.1% | 73 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 201 | 67.0% | 75 min | 5.97% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on RDU 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Raleigh 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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RDU → FLLRaleigh to Fort Lauderdale | JetBlue Airways | 81.1% | 82.6% | 1.76% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 2625 07:00 |
| 2. RDU → MIARaleigh to Miami | American Airlines | 75.9% | 77.2% | 1.64% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am359 flights89.2%
- 8am–11am170 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm446 flights78.1%
- 2pm–5pm89 flights57.3%
- 5pm–8pm218 flights60.4%
- 8pm–5am36 flights69.4%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.2% of the time, against 57.3% for the afternoon window. That is 32 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 446 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 67.7% on time, against 93.3% in October. 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 134 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 20,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 20,222 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 89.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 680 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 68.3% on time across 1,318 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,318 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. October runs 93.3% on time and December 67.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,285 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDU to FLL questions
How often is RDU to FLL delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.0% of the 1,318 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is RDU to FLL compared with the rest of the country?
78.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RDU to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 57.3%, 32 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 RDU to FLL?
December is the weakest month at 67.7% on time, compared with 93.3% in October. Across the year that is 26 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 RDU — the return legseparate record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on RDU to FLL82.6%
- Delta Air Lines on RDU to FLL78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to FLL74.6%
- Spirit Airlines on RDU to FLL67.0%
- RDU to ATL, a related route87.6%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- RDU to ORD, a related route74.4%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record82.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. RDU to FLL and FLL to RDU 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.