Carrier route record
NKAUS→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Austin to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 375
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on AUS to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 375 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 369 at 71.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on AUS to FLL runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 95 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.33%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.2%
Every carrier on AUS to FLL, 1,116 flights
These figures cover 375 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on AUS to FLL
Spirit flew 375 of the 1,116 flights on AUS to FLL, about 34% of it. Its 68.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 71.0% to Southwest at 62.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 71.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 62.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 372 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 369 | 71.0% | 77 min | 0.81% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 375 | 68.1% | 65 min | 5.33% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 372 | 62.8% | 47 min | 0.54% | D+ |
JetBlue leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 73 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am290 flights76.2%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm44 flights65.1%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm33 flights3.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 0% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 3.3% on time, against 76.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 290 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on AUS to FLL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 90.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 58 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 58.0%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 7,318 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 38%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 2,784 of the 7,318 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,318 reported delay minutes.
41% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,017 minutes out of 7,318, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.33%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,105 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 61.6% on time across 374 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 375 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 AUS to FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.33% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 354 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to AUS, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on AUS to FLL71.0%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to FLL62.8%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.