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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

NKDFW→LGA

Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York

Flights
196
Period
September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route
3%
Carriers
4
D−GRADE

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

Spirit on DFW to LGA draws a D−. Roughly 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 196 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,851 at 72.5% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on DFW to LGA runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 141 extra late arrivals.

Key figures

On time

63.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 182 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.14%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

66.1%

Every carrier on DFW to LGA, 6,650 flights

These figures cover 196 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on DFW to LGA

Spirit flew 196 of the 6,650 flights on DFW to LGA, about 3% of it. Its 63.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 72.5% to Frontier at 58.7%. 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 72.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,311 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to LGA
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Delta Air Lines1,85172.5%92 min5.24%C−
American Airlines4,31164.0%70 min4.80%D−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample19663.2%81 min7.14%D−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample29258.7%77 min6.51%D−

Delta Air Lines cancels 5.2% 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.

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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.

  • 5am–8am52 flights83.0%
  • 8am–11am54 flights75.5%
  • 11am–2pm—
  • 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 90 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DFW to LGA through the year

  • Jul–Sep 20254 flights—
  • Oct–Dec 202572 flights66.7%
  • Jan–Mar 202690 flights63.3%
  • Apr–Jun 202630 flights50.0%

Scale runs 40% to 70%. 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 63.2% on time across 196 flights.

Spirit on DFW to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 65 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.

Arrival by arrival

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

When Spirit on DFW to LGA is late it tends to be very late: 35 of its 67 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 13 were two hours or more.

  • 15+ min early41 flights22.5%
  • Within 15 min74 flights40.7%
  • 15–29 min late12 flights6.6%
  • 30–59 min late20 flights11.0%
  • 1–2 hours late22 flights12.1%
  • 2+ hours late13 flights7.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 182 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

13 of 73 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on DFW to LGA

The latest arrival of the period was on 9 November 2025, 5 hours 32 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Four of the five worst days fell in November 2025.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on DFW to LGA in the period
DateArrived late byLargest filed cause
9 November 20255 hours 32 minutesNational Airspace System
29 December 20255 hours 2 minutesNational Airspace System
20 November 20254 hours 29 minutesNational Airspace System
10 November 20253 hours 26 minutesNational Airspace System
11 November 20253 hours 16 minutesNational Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 59% of the 5,433 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

  • National Airspace System
    59%
  • Carrier
    24%
  • Late-arriving aircraft
    17%
  • Security
    0%

59% 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 3,194 minutes out of 5,433, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,433 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 7.14%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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

19.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.5% on time across 195 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 196 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 7.14% 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. 182 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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