Carrier route record

NKDFW→DTW

Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Detroit

Flights: 235
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on DFW to DTW lands a B+, about a point 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 235 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,404 at 83.3% on time.

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

On time

78.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 233 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.85%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.6%

Every carrier on DFW to DTW, 3,506 flights

These figures cover 235 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 DTW

Spirit flew 235 of the 3,506 flights on DFW to DTW, about 7% of it. Its 78.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 94.7% to American at 67.5%. 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 83.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,621 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	19	94.7%	51 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,404	83.3%	100 min	1.57%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	227	79.8%	69 min	1.76%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	235	78.5%	88 min	0.85%	B+
American Airlines	1,621	67.5%	70 min	2.53%	C

The spread between Delta and American is 16 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 16 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 19 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am135 flights85.8%
8am–11am2 flights—
11am–2pm36 flights66.7%
2pm–5pm6 flights—
5pm–8pm12 flights—
8pm–5am44 flights72.7%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 66.7% on time against 85.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 135 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DFW to DTW through the year

Jul–Sep 2025112 flights76.8%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights85.6%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
Apr–Jun 202625 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 78.5% on time across 235 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on DFW to DTW logged 112 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 91 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 25 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 78.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.9%. 22 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 4,389 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,712 of the 4,389 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,389 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 85.8% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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. 9.9% 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 986 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 runs 77.7% on time across 237 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 235 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 DTW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 235 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 78.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 233 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