Carrier route record
NKCLT→LGA
Spirit Airlines · Charlotte to New York
- Flights
- 261
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- 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 LGA lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 261 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 923 at 79.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 248 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.98%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.5%
Every carrier on CLT to LGA, 4,193 flights
These figures cover 261 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on CLT to LGA
Spirit flew 261 of the 4,193 flights on CLT to LGA, about 6% of it. Its 77.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 79.8% to Frontier at 51.6%. 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 79.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 69.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,767 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 923 | 79.8% | 94 min | 4.88% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 261 | 77.0% | 72 min | 4.98% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,767 | 69.8% | 76 min | 3.79% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 51.6% | 113 min | 9.09% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.9% 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.
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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 36 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am107 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am20 flights—
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm80 flights71.8%
- 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 93.3% 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 107 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on CLT to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025110 flights80.4%
- Jan–Mar 202691 flights67.1%
- Apr–Jun 202630 flights73.3%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. 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 77.0% on time across 261 flights.
Spirit on CLT to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.4% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.1%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 87 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 91.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.6%, a spread of 28 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on CLT to LGA runs when it is late
Spirit on CLT to LGA often beats the schedule: 68 of 248 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Spirit on CLT to LGA is late it tends to be very late: 30 of its 57 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 7 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early68 flights27.4%
- Within 15 min123 flights49.6%
- 15–29 min late12 flights4.8%
- 30–59 min late15 flights6.0%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights9.3%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 248 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
15 of 65 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on CLT to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 December 2025, 4 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Five of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 December 2025 | 4 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 December 2025 | 3 hours 55 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 December 2025 | 2 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 December 2025 | 2 hours 30 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 December 2025 | 2 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 4,074 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,074 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 4,074 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 1,738 minutes out of 4,074, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.98%, 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
12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.7% on time across 262 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. 261 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 4.98% 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. 248 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to LGA, every carrier
- Spirit on LGA to CLT, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CLT to LGA79.8%
- American Airlines on CLT to LGA69.8%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to LGA51.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.