Carrier route record
NKDFW→LGA
Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York
- Flights
- 242
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DFW to LGA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 242 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,955 at 73.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on DFW to LGA runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 228 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.1%
Every carrier on DFW to LGA, 6,786 flights
These figures cover 242 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% 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 LGA
Spirit flew 242 of the 6,786 flights on DFW to LGA, about 4% of it. Its 65.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 73.4% to Frontier at 62.6%. One 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 73.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,298 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,955 | 73.4% | 96 min | 4.55% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 242 | 65.8% | 75 min | 5.79% | C− |
| American Airlines | 4,298 | 64.6% | 70 min | 4.84% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 291 | 62.6% | 77 min | 5.50% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 4.8% 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 38 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am52 flights83.0%
- 8am–11am92 flights75.9%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm90 flights45.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.0% of the time, against 45.3% for the afternoon window. That is 38 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 92 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DFW to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202550 flights78.0%
- Oct–Dec 202572 flights66.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights63.3%
- Apr–Jun 202630 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% 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 65.8% on time across 242 flights.
Spirit on DFW to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 61 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 54.5%. 21 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. National Airspace System accounts for 61% of the 5,875 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.
- 61%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
61% 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 3,593 minutes out of 5,875, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,875 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.79%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 16.7% 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 1,389 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 69.6% on time across 241 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 242 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 LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.79% 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. 228 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to LGA, every carrier
- Spirit on LGA to DFW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DFW to LGA73.4%
- American Airlines on DFW to LGA64.6%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to LGA62.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.