Carrier route record

NKDFW→LAS

Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Las Vegas

Flights: 368
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on DFW to LAS lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 368 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 813 at 77.0% on time.

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

On time

78.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.36%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.2%

Every carrier on DFW to LAS, 5,163 flights

These figures cover 368 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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 LAS

Spirit flew 368 of the 5,163 flights on DFW to LAS, about 7% of it. Its 78.2% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.2% to American at 66.7%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 77.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,982 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)	368	78.2%	84 min	1.36%	B
Frontier Airlines	813	77.0%	76 min	1.97%	B
American Airlines	3,982	66.7%	71 min	3.04%	C−

American Airlines cancels 3.0% 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 23 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am34 flights88.2%
8am–11am8 flights—
11am–2pm45 flights75.6%
2pm–5pm31 flights87.1%
5pm–8pm180 flights80.1%
8pm–5am70 flights65.2%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.2% of the time, against 65.2% for the overnight window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 180 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DFW to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 2025143 flights76.6%
Oct–Dec 2025114 flights80.7%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights82.1%
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 78.2% on time across 368 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on DFW to LAS held fairly steady: 76.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.7% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 82.1% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.2%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 6,611 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
48%
National Airspace System
28%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

48% 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 6,611 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 6,611 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 88.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,055 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 79.8% on time across 373 flights, within 2 points 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. 368 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 LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 368 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 78.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 363 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