Carrier route record

NKATL→MSP

Spirit Airlines · Atlanta to Minneapolis

Flights: 124
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on ATL to MSP lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 124 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on ATL to MSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 123 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.81%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.2%

Every carrier on ATL to MSP, 3,524 flights

These figures cover 124 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on ATL to MSP

Spirit flew 124 of the 3,524 flights on ATL to MSP, about 4% of it. Its 80.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.1% to Frontier at 63.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	3,221	82.1%	56 min	0.37%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	124	80.5%	69 min	0.81%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	179	63.4%	55 min	2.23%	D

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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am45 flights91.1%
8am–11am18 flights—
11am–2pm8 flights—
2pm–5pm33 flights75.0%
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am19 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.1% of the time, against 75.0% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 45 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on ATL to MSP through the year

Jul–Sep 202575 flights83.8%
Oct–Dec 202549 flights75.5%

Scale runs 65% 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 80.5% on time across 124 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on ATL to MSP logged 75 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 49 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

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 1,663 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
23%
Security
3%

35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 1,663 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 1,663 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 642 of the 1,663 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, below the national 1.81% 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

7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 907 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg runs 78.0% on time across 124 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 124 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 MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 124 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 80.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 123 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures