Fort Lauderdale · FL
FLL — Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport
Closer to the cruise port than any airport has a right to be
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood sits between Miami and Palm Beach and serves as a genuine alternative to Miami International, particularly for low-cost carriers and for travel to the Caribbean and Latin America. Fares from here are frequently lower than from Miami on the same routes.
Its other distinguishing feature is proximity to Port Everglades, one of the busiest cruise ports in the world, which is about ten minutes away. For a cruise passenger this is about as convenient as airports get.
Terminals and how they connect
Four terminals
Terminals 1 through 4 are arranged in a horseshoe around the access roads. They are connected landside by walkways and a shuttle; airside connections between all of them are not guaranteed, so a terminal change may mean re-clearing security.
Getting into Fort Lauderdale
Times below are realistic ranges rather than best cases. Rail journeys keep to a timetable; road journeys do not, and treating the two the same is how people miss flights.
Taxi or ride-hailing
10–20 minutes to Fort Lauderdale beach or downtown
Quick, because the airport is close to the city. Designated ride-hailing pickup areas are signposted from each terminal.
To Port Everglades
About 10 minutes
Exceptionally short. Cruise transfers, taxis and ride-hailing all cover it, and the journey is barely longer than getting out of the terminal.
Tri-Rail and Brightline to Miami
45–90 minutes to Miami depending on the service
A shuttle connects the airport to the Tri-Rail commuter station, which runs down to Miami cheaply but slowly. Brightline's Fort Lauderdale station is in the city rather than at the airport and is considerably faster.
Connecting through FLL
Fort Lauderdale is primarily an origin-and-destination airport. If you are connecting, check whether both flights use the same terminal — the horseshoe layout means a change can involve going landside, and the walk between the far terminals is longer than it looks on a map.
Worth knowing before you fly
Compare it against Miami before booking
The two airports are around forty minutes apart and serve many of the same destinations. Fares from Fort Lauderdale are often lower, particularly on Caribbean and Latin American routes and on low-cost carriers, so it is worth checking both.
It is the obvious airport for a cruise
Port Everglades is roughly ten minutes away. Against Miami's port, which is a longer drive from its airport, this is a meaningful difference on embarkation day.
The Caribbean network is deep
Service to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Central America is substantial and competitive, reflecting South Florida's communities rather than tourism alone.
Terminal assignments, transit timetables and fares all change. Confirm the details that matter to your trip with the airport or transport operator before you travel.
Will you make your connection at FLL?
Most of what a tight connection costs was never about FLL. Border formalities, a bag that is not through-checked and a door that closes before departure are the same at every airport, and they are usually what strands people — so the sum below is real arithmetic even though we hold no transfer times for FLL.
45 minutes to spare
You have 60 minutes after the delay. This connection needs about 15. Enough room for a gate change.
This is the floor, before you walk anywhere. Every minute below holds at any airport, because none of it is a property of FLL — it is border formalities, baggage and a closing gate. Add your terminal change above to finish the sum.
| 15m | Gate closes before departure | typical published gate cutoff |
| 15m | needed in total | |
Arithmetic, not a prediction — we hold no data that would let us put a probability on your flight, so we do not pretend to. The gate cutoff is a typical published figure; confirm your airline's. Your airline's app knows your actual gates, which we do not.
For four hubs we have read the operator's own transfer figures and datestamped them, which lets the arithmetic run without asking you anything: DFW, IAH, MIA and LAX.
If your flight through FLL is cancelled or badly delayed
FLL in the DOT's own numbers
Departures from Fort Lauderdale as the carriers filed them with the US Department of Transportation for May 2026. This is the figure that decides whether a delay here is anybody's fault but the weather's.
FLL ranks 29th of 41 for departures among the airports we cover, its 23.5% late rate is 1.1 points worse than the 22.4% median, the 16th-worst here, and 74.1% of the filed delay minutes were coded as carrier delay or late-arriving aircraft rather than extreme weather or air traffic control, below the 74.6% median here.
- Departures filed
- 5,972
- Over 15 min late
- 23.5%
- Cancelled
- 0.5%
- Carrier delay + late-arriving aircraft
- 74.1%
The last figure is the share of filed delay minutes coded as carrier delay or late-arriving aircraft rather than extreme weather or air traffic control. It sums two BTS fields and is not a BTS field itself, and it establishes no fault: the late-arriving code records that the inbound aircraft was late, not what delayed it. The reasoning, and the objection to it, are set out in the airline accountability index. Summed across reporting carriers only, so a hub carrying a lot of non-reporting regional traffic reads better here than a traveller experiences it.
These are monthly aggregate filing codes. They cannot establish what caused your individual flight, whether it was within the carrier's control, or whether compensation is owed.
The departures from FLL most likely to run late
Every carrier and destination out of Fort Lauderdale with enough filed departures to measure, worst first. A route missing from this list flies too thinly for a percentage to mean anything, which is a reason to withhold it rather than to soften it.
| Route | Airline | Flights | Late |
|---|---|---|---|
| FLL → ATL | Delta Air Lines | 391 | 20.2% |
What the airlines flying here have committed to in writing
Under 14 CFR § 253.4 a carrier's Conditions of Carriage are incorporated into your ticket, which makes them enforceable terms rather than a customer-service policy. Below is what each carrier with filed departures from FLL commits to when the disruption is theirs. These 4 have contract text we have read ourselves.
American Airlines
Ask for the seatAmerican Airlines' contract commits to their own next available flight and says nothing about who sold the ticket.
Rebooking your delayed / canceled flight. Read from the contract on 2026-07-29. Source
Delta Air Lines
Ask for the seatDelta Air Lines' contract commits to their own next available flight and says nothing about who sold the ticket.
Rule 19.A, Delta's Liability in the Event of Schedule Changes, Delays and Flight Cancellations. Read from the contract on 2026-07-29. Source
United Airlines
We hold no textUnited Airlines' contract page refuses automated requests, so we cannot verify what it currently says and will not paraphrase it.
Not yet transcribed. Source
Southwest Airlines
Ask for the refundSouthwest Airlines' contract only says it may rebook you, so there is no seat to demand — but it names a refund as your remedy.
Section 9.b(1)(i). Read from the contract on 2026-07-29. Source
B6, F9 also file departures from FLL. We have not transcribed their Conditions of Carriage, so this page says nothing about what they promise rather than guessing.
Get the exact clause and a script to read themThe federal floor, underneath any contract
Statutory minimums, so no airline's contract and no agency's terms can go below them. They follow your itinerary rather than FLL, so each one is set out in full on its own tool:
How FLL compares with airports of its size
A late-departure rate means little on its own, so these are the airports sitting immediately either side of FLL on the same table. Each figure is the share of departures leaving more than fifteen minutes behind schedule, from the same Department of Transportation filing.
Which airlines run late out of FLL
Departures from FLL as filed with the US Department of Transportation, worst first. Only carriers with at least 300 departures in the month appear, so a carrier missing from this table flies here too thinly to measure fairly rather than perfectly.
| Airline | Departures | Over 15 min late | Carrier delay + late-arriving aircraft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 375 | 32.5% | 77.5% |
| Southwest Airlines | 954 | 31.6% | 82.1% |
| American Airlines | 732 | 27.2% | 84.7% |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,976 | 23.5% | 66.2% |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,143 | 19.7% | 70.5% |
| United Airlines | 748 | 12% | 58% |
The last column is the share of filed delay minutes coded as carrier delay or late-arriving aircraft, as opposed to extreme weather or air traffic control. It records how the minutes were filed, not who was at fault. Each airline guide carries that carrier's national record; the accountability index sets out why late inbound aircraft is grouped with carrier delay, and publishes the whole table as a downloadable file.
Figures cover May 2026, a single reporting month, from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics On-Time Performance database. Retrieved 2026-07-28. Reporting under 14 CFR part 234 covers domestic US scheduled service only, so no international route appears — including anything to or from Mexico.
Airlines based at FLL
Carriers based here, which usually means more non-stops and more daily frequencies to fall back on if something goes wrong.
Routes through FLL
Flying from Fort Lauderdale
Stuck on hold?
Talk to an independent agent instead
Airline phone queues and chatbots are where a rebooking stalls. Our agents work these routes daily and will look at what is actually available, walk through the letter you are about to send, and tell you what a desk agent will and will not do. We are not the airline and we do not file claims for you — the templates above are yours to send.
FAQ
FLL — common questions
Terminals, transfers and getting into the city.
Is Fort Lauderdale airport a good alternative to Miami?
Often, yes. The two are around forty minutes apart and overlap heavily on destinations, and Fort Lauderdale fares are frequently lower, especially on Caribbean and Latin American routes. Checking both before booking is worth the minute it takes.
How far is Fort Lauderdale airport from the cruise port?
Port Everglades is about ten minutes away, which is unusually close. It is one of the main reasons cruise passengers choose Fort Lauderdale over Miami.
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