Which Miami airport should you fly from?

MIA is clearly ahead on on-time arrival. On the other two rates the airports cannot be told apart, so this is the only difference the data supports.

MIA is clearly ahead on 2 of 4 rates; the other 2 are too close to call.

A check mark and green mark the best figure in a row (higher for on-time rates, lower for delays and cancellations) when it is clearly better than the other’s: a two-proportion test on each airport’s flight count, at about 95% confidence. Otherwise the row says “too close to call”. Average and median delay carry no sample-error estimate here, so they are marked by the printed figure alone.

• On-time arrival. MIA is clearly higher: MIA 76.1%, FLL 69.2% (6.9 points from best to worst).
• Cancellation rate. Too close to call between MIA and FLL: MIA 0.74%, FLL 1.08%.
• Severe delay (60+ min). Too close to call between MIA and FLL: MIA 8.4%, FLL 9.8%.

The airlines differ: MIA is 100% American Airlines and FLL is 42% JetBlue. A gap between airports can be a gap between airlines.

The same airline from different airports

• American Airlines flies it from MIA and FLL: MIA 76.1% (5,671 flights), FLL 65.2% (235 flights); MIA is clearly better on time.

Airline figures need 200 flights on the route and use the same test. The airline is the same, so a gap is not about who flies; the flights each carries still differ.

By departure time

A window needs 120 flights on the route to be scored. 3 of the 4 windows with two or more scored airports have a clear leader; a route is a small sample next to a whole airport, so the rest cannot be called.

How the best airport is chosen. An airport is called best only when it is clearly ahead on at least two of on-time arrival, cancellation rate and severe delay, and no other airport is clearly ahead on any of them. A lead the flight counts cannot separate from chance is reported as too close to call, which a route with a few thousand flights produces often.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – August 2026 · Each route is measured over its own period. Departures from MIA and FLL only.

• On-time arrivalMIA had the best on-time arrival rate, 73.2%, ahead of FLL at 72.5%. Best to worst is 0.7 points, a difference larger than chance but under a point.
• CancellationsFLL cancelled 1.72% of its flights, 1.1 times the rate at MIA (1.50%).
• Taxi timeTaxi-out averages 21.2 min at MIA and 17.8 min at FLL, 3.4 minutes more between pushback and wheels-up. Coming in, taxi time runs from 7.4 min at FLL to 9.7 min at MIA.
• Time of dayMIA is clearly ahead in 4 of 6 departure windows (12–3 PM, 3–6 PM, 6–9 PM, and 9 PM–5 AM); in the other 2 no airport leads clearly. The gap is widest for departures at 9 PM–5 AM (MIA 69.2% against FLL 58.8%) and narrowest at 5–9 AM (0.1 points).
• Hour by hourThe biggest swing through the day is at FLL: 5 AM–6 AM reached 91.7% on time (4,136 flights) and 9 PM–10 PM fell to 57.8% (10,418), 33.9 points apart.
• AirlinesAmerican Airlines flies 56% of departures from MIA, more than any other carrier at any airport here. The largest carrier at each: American Airlines at MIA (56%) and Spirit Airlines at FLL (24%). Carriers with 500 or more departures at only one of them: Envoy Air and Republic Airways at MIA and Allegiant Air at FLL.
• Destinations69 destinations outside the metro area get 750 or more flights from these airports; 46 of them from at least two and 46 from every airport. MIA alone serves 14 destinations (9% of its departures), including Key West (EYW), Tallahassee (TLH), and Pensacola (PNS).
• Same destinationsOn the 46 destinations every airport serves, on-time arrival runs from 72.7% at FLL to 72.7% at MIA: 0.0 points, narrower than the 0.7 points over all their flights, so part of the overall gap comes from where each airport flies; no airport leads clearly.

MIA is clearly ahead on 4 of 4 rates.

A check mark and green mark the best figure in a row (higher for on-time rates, lower for delays and cancellations) when it is clearly better than the other’s: a two-proportion test on each airport’s flight count, at about 95% confidence. Otherwise the row says “too close to call”. Average and median delay carry no sample-error estimate here, so they are marked by the printed figure alone.

Share of the metro is each airport’s part of the 634,850 departures at these 2 airports. Taxi-out is pushback to wheels-up on departure and taxi-in is touchdown to gate on arrival, averaged over all flights. The score is the FlyerIntel Reliability Score, 0 to 100.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – August 2026 · Departing flights only.

A window needs at least 120 flights at an airport to be scored. The check mark uses the same test as the table above. Gap is best minus worst among the scored airports.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – August 2026 · Windows are the scheduled local departure time at each airport.

Each chart has its own scale, so read the numbers in the table, not the bar heights, when comparing airports. The best and worst of 24 hours are the two extremes, so a small airport’s best hour is partly luck; the flight count is beside each. A swing under 3 points, or one the two hours’ flight counts cannot separate from chance, is marked as within noise.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – August 2026 · Hours are the scheduled local departure hour. An hour needs at least 120 flights to be scored.

Airlines are the operating carrier, so a regional airline flying for a larger one is listed under its own name. Only airlines with at least 500 departures at an airport are listed there.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – August 2026

Destinations every airport serves

46 places get 750 or more flights from each of MIA and FLL. Counting only flights to those places (89% of MIA’s and 89% of FLL’s departures):

The shared places: Atlanta (ATL), Austin (AUS), Hartford (BDL), Nashville (BNA), Boston (BOS), Baltimore (BWI), Charleston (CHS), Cleveland (CLE), Charlotte (CLT), Columbus (CMH), Cincinnati / Covington (CVG), Dallas (DAL), Washington (DCA), Denver (DEN), and 32 more.

The same airline at different airports

Where one airline flies from several of these airports, its own on-time rate at each. The airline is the same, so a gap is not about who flies, though the routes each flies from an airport still differ.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – August 2026 · Same test as above. A dash means the airline has fewer than 500 departures at that airport.

• Different airlines. American Airlines flies 56% of MIA’s departures; Spirit Airlines flies 24% of FLL’s departures. An airline brings its own schedule, aircraft and habits to an airport, so part of every gap above is a gap between carriers.
• Different destinations. 9% of MIA’s departures and 5% of FLL’s departures go to places no other airport here serves. An on-time arrival is counted at the far end, so weather and congestion at the destination are in the figure.
• Different trip lengths. The average route, weighted by flights, is 1,038 miles from MIA and 1,051 miles from FLL. Short regional hops and long coast-to-coast flights fail in different ways.
• Ground time belongs to the airport. Taxi-out and the share of flights that push back on time measure the airport itself. On-time arrival measures the whole trip.
• History, not a forecast. These are flights from July 2023 – August 2026. A storm cancels hundreds of flights together, so a clear gap is a statement about this sample, not a promise about your trip.

• Chicago (ORD, MDW)
• New York (LGA, EWR, JFK)
• Dallas–Fort Worth (DFW, DAL)
• Los Angeles (LAX, SNA, BUR, ONT)
• Washington (DCA, BWI, IAD)
• San Francisco (SFO, SJC, OAK)
• Houston (IAH, HOU)