Carrier route record
NKDTW→DFW
Spirit Airlines · Detroit to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 237
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DTW to DFW lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 237 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,405 at 76.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on DTW to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 233 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on DTW to DFW, 3,509 flights
These figures cover 237 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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 DFW
Spirit flew 237 of the 3,509 flights on DTW to DFW, about 7% of it. Its 77.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 94.7% to Frontier at 59.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 19 | 94.7% | 136 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 237 | 77.7% | 62 min | 1.27% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,405 | 76.3% | 57 min | 1.71% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,621 | 75.9% | 92 min | 2.71% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 227 | 59.8% | 85 min | 3.52% | D− |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 76.3%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am21 flights—
- 8am–11am34 flights59.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm139 flights79.6%
- 8pm–5am43 flights81.4%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 81.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 22 points.
Across the year
Spirit on DTW to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025114 flights81.4%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights77.8%
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202625 flights—
Scale runs 70% 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 77.7% on time across 237 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on DTW to DFW logged 114 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 91 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 25 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 77.7% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 73.3%. 6 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 46% of the 3,199 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.
- 46%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
46% 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 1,459 minutes out of 3,199, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,199 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.42%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.6% 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 986 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 78.5% on time across 235 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. 237 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 DFW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 237 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 77.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 233 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DFW, every carrier
- Spirit on DFW to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to DFW76.3%
- American Airlines on DTW to DFW75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to DFW59.8%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.