Carrier route record
NKCMH→LGA
Spirit Airlines · Columbus to New York
- Flights
- 189
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on CMH to LGA sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 189 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on CMH to LGA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 83 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 179 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.9%
Every carrier on CMH to LGA, 3,075 flights
These figures cover 189 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 CMH to LGA
Spirit flew 189 of the 3,075 flights on CMH to LGA, about 6% of it. Its 69.3% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 100.0% to Spirit at 69.3%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airways | 2,882 | 79.5% | 71 min | 4.51% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 189 | 69.3% | 78 min | 4.23% | 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 26 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–8am35 flights82.4%
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm22 flights—
- 2pm–5pm32 flights56.2%
- 5pm–8pm43 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am55 flights69.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 82.4% of the time, against 56.2% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 55 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on CMH to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights71.8%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights64.4%
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. 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 69.3% on time across 189 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on CMH to LGA logged 92 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 90 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 69.3% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 75% of the 4,262 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.
- 75%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 7%Late-arriving aircraft
75% 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 3,194 minutes out of 4,262, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,262 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.23%, 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. 14.0% 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.
At 479 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.9% on time across 187 flights, 11 points above 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 189 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 CMH to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.23% 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. 179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to LGA, every carrier
- Spirit on LGA to CMH, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CMH to LGA79.5%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.