Carrier route record

NKDFW→LAX

Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles

Flights: 381
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 DFW to LAX lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 381 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 757 at 89.2% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.2% on time across 757 flights.

On time

81.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 367 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.67%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

74.0%

Every carrier on DFW to LAX, 6,184 flights

These figures cover 381 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on DFW to LAX

Spirit flew 381 of the 6,184 flights on DFW to LAX, about 6% of it. Its 81.5% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.2% to American at 70.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 89.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,536 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	757	89.2%	95 min	1.59%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)	381	81.5%	72 min	3.67%	B−
Frontier Airlines	510	79.2%	78 min	0.98%	B+
American Airlines	4,536	70.2%	64 min	2.25%	C

The spread between Delta and American is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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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 11 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am97 flights83.7%
8am–11am15 flights—
11am–2pm18 flights—
2pm–5pm77 flights72.7%
5pm–8pm35 flights74.3%
8pm–5am139 flights83.8%

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

The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 83.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 11 points.

Across the year

Spirit on DFW to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202558 flights86.2%
Oct–Dec 2025151 flights78.8%
Jan–Mar 2026142 flights82.2%
Apr–Jun 202630 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 81.5% on time across 381 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on DFW to LAX held fairly steady: 86.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 78.8% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 82.2% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 7 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 85.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.0%, a spread of 11 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on DFW to LAX runs when it is late

Spirit on DFW to LAX often beats the schedule: 141 of 367 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 68 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.

15+ min early141 flights38.4%
Within 15 min158 flights43.1%
15–29 min late22 flights6.0%
30–59 min late19 flights5.2%
1–2 hours late13 flights3.5%
2+ hours late14 flights3.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 367 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 89 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 30 still arrived on time. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on DFW to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 24 October 2025, 4 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across October, January, September, November and February, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on DFW to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
24 October 2025	4 hours 11 minutes	Extreme weather
26 January 2026	3 hours 57 minutes	Carrier
19 September 2025	3 hours 55 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
24 November 2025	3 hours 34 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
12 February 2026	3 hours 1 minute	Carrier

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 4,882 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
Extreme weather
9%

No single cause dominates. carrier at 33%, national airspace system at 30% and late-arriving aircraft at 28% split the 4,882 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around. The split is drawn from 4,882 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 3.67%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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

7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,235 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 70.8% on time across 383 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 381 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 LAX

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.67% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 367 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures