Carrier route record
NKCLE→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Cleveland to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 232
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on CLE 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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 232 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 506 at 90.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on CLE to FLL runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 220 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on CLE to FLL, 1,164 flights
These figures cover 232 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 CLE to FLL
Spirit flew 232 of the 1,164 flights on CLE to FLL, about 20% of it. Its 68.6% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 90.4% to Southwest at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 90.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 75.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 425 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 506 | 90.4% | 68 min | 0.79% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 425 | 75.4% | 90 min | 1.88% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 232 | 68.6% | 75 min | 4.74% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 124 min | 0.00% | F+ |
The spread between United and Frontier is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 17 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am17 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm66 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm112 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am32 flights67.7%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% on time, against 76.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 112 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on CLE to FLL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202569 flights75.0%
- Oct–Dec 202572 flights74.3%
- Jan–Mar 202679 flights62.5%
- Apr–Jun 202612 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 68.6% on time across 232 flights.
Spirit on CLE to FLL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 62.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 77 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%. 27 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 5,187 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
53% 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 5,187 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 5,187 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 1,873 minutes out of 5,187, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.74%, 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. 14.5% 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.
The 1,062 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 67.0% on time across 233 flights, within 2 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. 232 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 CLE to FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.74% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 220 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to CLE, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLE to FLL90.4%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to FLL75.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.