Carrier route record

NKATL→LAX

Spirit Airlines · Atlanta to Los Angeles

Flights: 167
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 4

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

Spirit on ATL to LAX lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 167 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,817 at 79.1% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 3,817 flights.

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 166 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.60%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

77.8%

Every carrier on ATL to LAX, 4,851 flights

These figures cover 167 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on ATL to LAX

Spirit flew 167 of the 4,851 flights on ATL to LAX, about 3% of it. Its 78.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.1% to Frontier at 70.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.1% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 490 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	3,817	79.1%	57 min	0.73%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	167	78.9%	92 min	0.60%	B+
American Airlines	377	73.0%	120 min	0.80%	C+
Frontier Airlines	490	70.5%	61 min	1.63%	C

Delta leads Frontier by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am73 flights86.3%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm33 flights66.7%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am61 flights76.7%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 66.7% on time against 86.3% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 73 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on ATL to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202556 flights83.9%
Oct–Dec 2025105 flights78.8%
Jan–Mar 20266 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 78.9% on time across 167 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on ATL to LAX logged 56 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 105 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 6 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 78.9% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on ATL to LAX runs when it is late

Spirit on ATL to LAX often beats the schedule: 78 of 166 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 35 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.

15+ min early78 flights47.0%
Within 15 min53 flights31.9%
15–29 min late11 flights6.6%
30–59 min late11 flights6.6%
1–2 hours late4 flights2.4%
2+ hours late9 flights5.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 166 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

14 of 48 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. Only 1 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on ATL to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 21 September 2025, 11 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in September 2025.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on ATL to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
21 September 2025	11 hours 25 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
23 September 2025	4 hours 57 minutes	Carrier
7 December 2025	3 hours 38 minutes	Carrier
5 January 2026	3 hours 20 minutes	National Airspace System
22 September 2025	3 hours 13 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 3,206 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
43%
National Airspace System
13%

44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,206 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 to one. The split is drawn from 3,206 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,374 of the 3,206 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,947 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.5% on time across 167 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 167 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 Spirit on ATL to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 167 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 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 166 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