Carrier route record
NKCLT→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Charlotte to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 746
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on CLT to FLL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 746 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
76.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 708 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.5%
Every carrier on CLT to FLL, 3,014 flights
These figures cover 746 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 CLT to FLL
Spirit flew 746 of the 3,014 flights on CLT to FLL, about 25% of it. Its 76.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 76.3% to Frontier at 66.5%. 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) | 746 | 76.3% | 62 min | 4.83% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,106 | 76.0% | 61 min | 1.85% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 162 | 66.5% | 68 min | 3.70% | C− |
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 37 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–8am249 flights93.0%
- 8am–11am96 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm106 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm85 flights70.6%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights63.7%
- 8pm–5am113 flights55.7%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 93.0% 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 249 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 88.3% in August. 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 91.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.0%. 28 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 10,000 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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 10,476 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 4,260 minutes out of 10,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.83%, 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
8.3% 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 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. 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 71.3% on time across 748 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 746 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 4.83% 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. 708 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
- American Airlines on CLT to FLL76.0%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to FLL66.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.