Route reliability record
RIC→FLL
Richmond to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 808
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 806 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 808 RIC to FLL flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly RIC to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.3%, against 74.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 774 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
JetBlue
78.1% on time across 600 flights
These figures cover 808 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
Which airline is most reliable on RIC 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 | 600 | 78.1% | 79 min | 3.00% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 208 | 62.9% | 80 min | 6.25% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on RIC 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.
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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 33 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am320 flights86.2%
- 8am–11am147 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm119 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm41 flights63.2%
- 5pm–8pm166 flights53.2%
- 8pm–5am15 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.2% on time, against 86.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 320 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RIC to FLL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On RIC to FLL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 53.2%, a wide gap of 33.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.2%
- 8–11am76.9%
- 11am–2pm72.9%
- 2–5pm63.2%
- 5–8pm53.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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 55.1% on time, against 91.2% 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 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.9%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 15,702 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 86.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.84%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 actually 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 806 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 64.6% on time across 809 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. 808 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FLL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 774 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to FLL questions
How often is RIC to FLL delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.7% of the 808 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is RIC to FLL compared with the rest of the country?
74.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RIC to FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.2%, 33 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 RIC to FLL?
December is the weakest month at 55.1% on time, compared with 91.2% in October. Across the year that is 36 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on RIC to FLL78.1%
- Spirit Airlines on RIC to FLL62.9%
- RIC to ATL, a related route88.5%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- RIC to CLT, a related route82.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record78.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record62.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. RIC to FLL and FLL to RIC 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.