Carrier route record

NKBWI→DTW

Spirit Airlines · Baltimore to Detroit

Flights: 106
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on BWI to DTW lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 106 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,204 at 86.8% on time.

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

On time

77.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 105 completed flights

Avg delay

104 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.94%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.7%

Every carrier on BWI to DTW, 2,257 flights

These figures cover 106 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 BWI to DTW

Spirit flew 106 of the 2,257 flights on BWI to DTW, about 5% of it. Its 77.1% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 92.3% to Frontier at 73.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 785 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BWI to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	14	92.3%	17 min	7.14%	A−
Delta Air Lines	1,204	86.8%	103 min	1.66%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	106	77.1%	104 min	0.94%	B+
Southwest Airlines	785	75.8%	57 min	1.91%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	148	73.1%	66 min	2.03%	C

Delta leads Southwest by 11 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 106 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's BWI to DTW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 77.1% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Spirit on BWI to DTW through the year

Jul–Sep 202577 flights71.1%
Oct–Dec 202529 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 75%. 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 77.1% on time across 106 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on BWI to DTW logged 77 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 29 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 77.1% 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 2,491 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Extreme weather
20%
Carrier
3%
Security
1%

Extreme weather accounts for 20% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,491 reported delay minutes.

37% 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 2,491 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.

Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 9.5% 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.

At 409 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.6% on time across 109 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 106 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 BWI to DTW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 106 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 77.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 105 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