Carrier route record
NKBWI→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 687
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on BWI to FLL lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 687 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 655 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.66%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on BWI to FLL, 3,168 flights
These figures cover 687 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on BWI to FLL
Spirit flew 687 of the 3,168 flights on BWI to FLL, about 22% of it. Its 78.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.0% to Frontier at 51.3%. Two 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) | 687 | 78.0% | 63 min | 4.66% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,124 | 75.7% | 55 min | 1.69% | B |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 160 | 71.5% | 81 min | 5.00% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 197 | 51.3% | 90 min | 5.08% | F− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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.
- 5am–8am238 flights88.3%
- 8am–11am144 flights67.4%
- 11am–2pm85 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm62 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm112 flights68.5%
- 8pm–5am46 flights77.8%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.3% 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 238 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 62.2%, a spread of 28 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on BWI to FLL runs when it is late
Spirit on BWI to FLL often beats the schedule: 216 of 655 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 144 late arrivals split 49 under half an hour, 45 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 50 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early216 flights33.0%
- Within 15 min295 flights45.0%
- 15–29 min late49 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late45 flights6.9%
- 1–2 hours late31 flights4.7%
- 2+ hours late19 flights2.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 655 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 121 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 42 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FLL.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on BWI to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 February 2026, 5 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 February 2026 | 5 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 February 2026 | 4 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 January 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 December 2025 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
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 9,053 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 35%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 3,195 minutes out of 9,053, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,053 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,166 of the 9,053 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.66%, against 1.89% 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
7.6% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.1% on time across 684 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. 687 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 4.66% 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. 655 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 FLL75.7%
- JetBlue Airways on BWI to FLL71.5%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to FLL51.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.