Carrier route record
NKBWI→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 847
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on BWI to FLL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 847 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on BWI to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 814 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.0%
Every carrier on BWI to FLL, 3,108 flights
These figures cover 847 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 BWI to FLL
Spirit flew 847 of the 3,108 flights on BWI to FLL, about 27% of it. Its 78.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.5% to Frontier at 61.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 847 | 78.5% | 68 min | 3.90% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,126 | 75.9% | 57 min | 1.51% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 135 | 61.6% | 87 min | 7.41% | 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 21 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–8am299 flights88.0%
- 8am–11am144 flights67.4%
- 11am–2pm140 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm62 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm131 flights67.7%
- 8pm–5am71 flights75.4%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.0% of the time, against 67.4% for the morning window. That is 21 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 299 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on BWI to FLL through the year
December is the weak month at 59.0% on time, against 86.3% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.7%. 27 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 4,516 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,873 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.90%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
7.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 925 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 70.8% on time across 846 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 847 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 FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.90% 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. 814 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to BWI, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to FLL75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to FLL61.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.