Carrier route record
WNRDU→FLL
Southwest Airlines · Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 141
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on RDU to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 141 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest 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
74.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 138 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on RDU to FLL, 1,318 flights
These figures cover 141 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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
Southwest against every carrier on RDU to FLL
Southwest flew 141 of the 1,318 flights on RDU to FLL, about 11% of it. Its 74.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 82.6% to Spirit at 67.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 567 | 82.6% | 77 min | 1.76% | B |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 364 | 78.8% | 65 min | 1.10% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin 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− |
Departure window
When Southwest 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 141 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Southwest's RDU to FLL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 74.6% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Southwest on RDU to FLL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202548 flights69.6%
- Jan–Mar 202646 flights73.3%
- Apr–Jun 202630 flights80.0%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 74.6% on time across 141 flights.
Southwest on RDU to FLL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 80.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 69.6%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 47 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.0%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest 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 2,214 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
39% 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 2,214 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 2,214 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 922 of the 2,214 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 11.6% 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 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 64.2% on time across 141 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 141 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 Southwest on RDU to FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 141 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 74.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 138 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to FLL, every carrier
- Southwest on FLL to RDU, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on RDU to FLL82.6%
- Delta Air Lines on RDU to FLL78.8%
- Spirit Airlines on RDU to FLL67.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.