Route profile
SAT→FLL
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from San Antonio to Fort Lauderdale, 1,145 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – May 2026
Better than 74% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 951 flights. How this is calculated
SAT → FLL arrives on time 84.7% of the time; the return trip, FLL → SAT, arrives on time 69.6% of the time, a 15.1-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
SAT → FLL spends 21.4 minutes on the ground on a 1,145-mile trip: 11.8 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SAT and 9.6 minutes from touchdown to gate at FLL.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – May 2026
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – May 2026
30 min late
against a median of 11 min early
Percentiles over 951 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at FLL after arriving from SAT.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 27% | High risk |
| 45 min | 15% | Some risk |
| 60 min | 10.0% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.7% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.0% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.79% of the time and diverts 0.00% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 934 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 30 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 951 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SAT → FLL flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 90.4% of the time, against 74.3% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 16.1 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 94.9% on time from 258 flights
- 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 88.2% on time from 169 flights
- 8 AM to 9 AM: too few flights to score
- 10 AM: 80.1% on time from 160 flights
- 11 AM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why SAT → FLL runs late
July 2023 – May 2026
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for SAT → FLL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 906 | 84.9% | 1.77% | -11 min | 5.6% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 8.7 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – May 2026
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-06 to 2026-05), on-time arrivals averaged 80.0% against 81.5% in the 12 months before — declining by 1.5 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 951 SAT → FLL flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – May 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed