Carrier route record
DLRDU→FLL
Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RDU to FLL lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on RDU 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
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.2%
Every carrier on RDU to FLL, 1,402 flights
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on RDU to FLL
Delta flew 364 of the 1,402 flights on RDU to FLL, about 26% of it. Its 80.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.8% to Spirit at 62.8%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample | 364 | 80.8% | 67 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 668 | 79.5% | 78 min | 2.10% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 142 | 76.3% | 62 min | 2.11% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 70 | 68.1% | 76 min | 1.43% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 158 | 62.8% | 75 min | 7.59% | D− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RDU to FLL
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 364 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's RDU to FLL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 80.8% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on RDU to FLL through the year
January is the weak month at 70.0% on time, against 100.0% 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. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 65.4%, a spread of 23 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on RDU to FLL runs when it is late
Delta on RDU to FLL often beats the schedule: 98 of 360 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 69 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early98 flights27.2%
- Within 15 min193 flights53.6%
- 15–29 min late26 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late21 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late10 flights2.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 58 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. In the other direction, 23 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 Delta on RDU to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 9 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across March, January, July and August, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 9 hours 16 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 7 March 2026 | 6 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 January 2026 | 4 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 July 2026 | 2 hours 50 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 August 2026 | 2 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta 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 4,630 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,706 minutes out of 4,630, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,630 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.0% on time across 364 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 Delta on RDU to FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 364 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 80.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 360 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to FLL, every carrier
- Delta on FLL to RDU, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on RDU to FLL79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to FLL76.3%
- Spirit Airlines on RDU to FLL62.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.