Carrier route record

NKDFW→ATL

Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Atlanta

Flights: 300
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 6

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

Spirit on DFW to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 300 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,792 at 82.8% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.8% on time across 2,792 flights.

On time

72.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 292 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.67%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on DFW to ATL, 6,703 flights

These figures cover 300 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 DFW to ATL

Spirit flew 300 of the 6,703 flights on DFW to ATL, about 4% of it. Its 72.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.8% to Frontier at 65.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 82.8% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 65.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 876 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,792	82.8%	82 min	2.54%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	84	81.5%	49 min	2.38%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	300	72.9%	66 min	2.67%	C
American Airlines	2,635	71.9%	71 min	3.19%	C−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	16	66.7%	58 min	6.25%	C−
Frontier Airlines	876	65.6%	68 min	2.40%	C

American Airlines cancels 3.2% 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 13 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am35 flights85.7%
8am–11am14 flights—
11am–2pm48 flights78.7%
2pm–5pm8 flights—
5pm–8pm11 flights—
8pm–5am184 flights72.3%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.7% of the time, against 72.3% for the overnight window. That is 13 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 184 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DFW to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 202596 flights76.0%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights78.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights62.7%
Apr–Jun 202623 flights—

Scale runs 55% 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 72.9% on time across 300 flights.

Spirit on DFW to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 62.7%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 100 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.1%. 20 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 5,229 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
30%
Carrier
25%
Extreme weather
6%

39% 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 5,229 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 5,229 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.7% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.67%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 11.3% 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 731 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 78.1% on time across 302 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 300 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 DFW to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 300 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 292 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