Carrier route record

NKDFW→MIA

Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Miami

Flights: 282
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
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 MIA lands a B, 3 points 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 282 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

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

On time

80.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 276 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.13%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.8%

Every carrier on DFW to MIA, 4,831 flights

These figures cover 282 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on DFW to MIA

Spirit flew 282 of the 4,831 flights on DFW to MIA, about 6% of it. Its 80.4% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 80.4% to Frontier at 67.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to MIA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	282	80.4%	62 min	2.13%	B
American Airlines	4,297	68.1%	73 min	2.82%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	252	67.2%	108 min	1.98%	C

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 282 flights.

5am–8am179 flights82.2%
8am–11am52 flights82.4%
11am–2pm25 flights—
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am17 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 82.4% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.

Across the year

Spirit on DFW to MIA through the year

Jul–Sep 202596 flights83.3%
Oct–Dec 202574 flights91.8%
Jan–Mar 202671 flights65.2%
Apr–Jun 202641 flights78.0%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. 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 80.4% on time across 282 flights.

Spirit on DFW to MIA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 91.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 65.2%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 71 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.8%. 18 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. Carrier accounts for 57% of the 3,329 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.

Carrier
57%
National Airspace System
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
7%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 1,906 of the 3,329 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,329 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.9% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,121 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 62.0% on time across 282 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 282 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 MIA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 282 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 80.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 276 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