Carrier route record

WNRDU→FLL

Southwest Airlines · Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 142
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on RDU to FLL lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 142 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.

On time

76.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.11%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

77.2%

Every carrier on RDU to FLL, 1,402 flights

These figures cover 142 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on RDU to FLL

Southwest flew 142 of the 1,402 flights on RDU to FLL, about 10% of it. Its 76.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on RDU to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	364	80.8%	67 min	0.55%	B+
JetBlue Airways	668	79.5%	78 min	2.10%	B
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin 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−

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 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 142 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 76.3% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Southwest on RDU to FLL through the year

Jul–Sep 20254 flights—
Oct–Dec 202548 flights69.6%
Jan–Mar 202646 flights73.3%
Apr–Jun 202630 flights80.0%
Jul–Sep 202614 flights—

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 76.3% on time across 142 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 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.5%, a spread of 7 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on RDU to FLL runs when it is late

The 33 late arrivals split 12 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 14 an hour or more.

15+ min early22 flights15.8%
Within 15 min84 flights60.4%
15–29 min late12 flights8.6%
30–59 min late7 flights5.0%
1–2 hours late11 flights7.9%
2+ hours late3 flights2.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 139 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 48 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 17 still arrived on time. Only 2 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on RDU to FLL

The latest arrival of the period was on 13 June 2026, 4 hours 1 minute behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across June, November, March and December, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on RDU to FLL in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
13 June 2026	4 hours 1 minute	Carrier
29 November 2025	3 hours 13 minutes	Carrier
15 March 2026	2 hours	National Airspace System
29 December 2025	1 hour 50 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 March 2026	1 hour 46 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

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 2,049 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
41%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
2%

38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,049 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 2,049 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 840 of the 2,049 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

10.1% 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 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 59.4% on time across 142 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 142 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. 142 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 76.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 139 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures