Carrier route record
NKCLT→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Charlotte to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 607
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on CLT to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 607 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Spirit on CLT 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
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 572 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.60%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.7%
Every carrier on CLT to FLL, 3,060 flights
These figures cover 607 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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 CLT to FLL
Spirit flew 607 of the 3,060 flights on CLT to FLL, about 20% of it. Its 74.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 79.7% to Frontier at 62.4%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 160 | 79.7% | 79 min | 3.75% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,069 | 77.1% | 61 min | 1.79% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 607 | 74.7% | 63 min | 5.60% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 224 | 62.4% | 69 min | 4.46% | D− |
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 44 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am200 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am92 flights73.6%
- 11am–2pm97 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm42 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm94 flights63.6%
- 8pm–5am82 flights47.4%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.4% on time, against 91.8% 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 200 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on CLT to FLL through the year
December is the weak month at 56.4% on time, against 86.8% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.8%, a spread of 33 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on CLT to FLL runs when it is late
Spirit on CLT to FLL often beats the schedule: 199 of 572 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 145 late arrivals split 43 under half an hour, 51 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 51 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early199 flights34.8%
- Within 15 min228 flights39.9%
- 15–29 min late43 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late51 flights8.9%
- 1–2 hours late31 flights5.4%
- 2+ hours late20 flights3.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 572 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
34 of 158 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 21 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on CLT to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 November 2025, 3 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 November 2025 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 3 hours 37 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 December 2025 | 3 hours 22 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 April 2026 | 3 hours 8 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 February 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 9,065 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,065 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. The split is drawn from 9,065 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 3,692 minutes out of 9,065, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.60%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
8.9% 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 632 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 68.5% on time across 606 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. 607 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 CLT to FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.60% 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. 572 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to CLT, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on CLT to FLL79.7%
- American Airlines on CLT to FLL77.1%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to FLL62.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.