Carrier route record
NKDTW→ATL
Spirit Airlines · Detroit to Atlanta
- Flights
- 677
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DTW to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 677 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,703 at 81.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on DTW to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 659 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.92%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on DTW to ATL, 4,881 flights
These figures cover 677 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 DTW to ATL
Spirit flew 677 of the 4,881 flights on DTW to ATL, about 14% of it. Its 75.0% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to Frontier at 65.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.6% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 501 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 3,703 | 81.6% | 68 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 677 | 75.0% | 74 min | 1.92% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 501 | 65.3% | 107 min | 1.60% | C |
The spread between Delta and Frontier is 16 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 16 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 17 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am246 flights79.5%
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm42 flights81.0%
- 2pm–5pm103 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm134 flights69.8%
- 8pm–5am124 flights64.2%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.2% on time, against 81.0% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 246 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DTW to ATL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.7%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 12,271 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.74%.
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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 594 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 76.4% on time across 672 flights, within about a point 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. 677 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 DTW to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 677 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 75.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 659 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ATL, every carrier
- Spirit on ATL to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ATL81.6%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to ATL65.3%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.