Carrier route record

NKCLT→LGA

Spirit Airlines · Charlotte to New York

Flights: 331
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on CLT to LGA lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 331 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 964 at 81.4% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on CLT to LGA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 318 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.93%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.1%

Every carrier on CLT to LGA, 4,332 flights

These figures cover 331 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 LGA

Spirit flew 331 of the 4,332 flights on CLT to LGA, about 8% of it. Its 79.2% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.4% to Frontier at 61.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 81.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,802 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on CLT to LGA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	964	81.4%	81 min	4.15%	B−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	331	79.2%	72 min	3.93%	B−
American Airlines	2,802	68.9%	76 min	3.78%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	235	61.8%	102 min	4.26%	D−

Republic Airways cancels 4.2% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 35 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am169 flights92.2%
8am–11am20 flights—
11am–2pm8 flights—
2pm–5pm85 flights71.1%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am49 flights57.4%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.4% on time, against 92.2% 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 169 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on CLT to LGA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025100 flights89.9%
Oct–Dec 2025110 flights80.4%
Jan–Mar 202691 flights67.1%
Apr–Jun 202630 flights73.3%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. 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 79.2% on time across 331 flights.

Spirit on CLT to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 89.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.1%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 83 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.2%. 23 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 4,738 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
26%

37% 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 4,738 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 4,738 reported delay minutes.

37% 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 1,768 minutes out of 4,738, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.93%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% 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 544 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 70.6% on time across 332 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 331 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 LGA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.93% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 318 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures