Carrier route record
NKDTW→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Detroit to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 630
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DTW to FLL 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 630 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on DTW to FLL runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 105 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 609 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.5%
Every carrier on DTW to FLL, 2,692 flights
These figures cover 630 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 DTW to FLL
Spirit flew 630 of the 2,692 flights on DTW to FLL, about 23% of it. Its 66.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 77.2% to Frontier at 59.7%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 107 | 77.2% | 95 min | 4.67% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,808 | 73.6% | 69 min | 1.66% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 630 | 66.8% | 68 min | 3.17% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 147 | 59.7% | 61 min | 5.44% | D− |
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 54 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am276 flights78.6%
- 8am–11am82 flights50.6%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm37 flights24.2%
- 5pm–8pm201 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am30 flights—
Scale runs 15% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 78.6% of the time, against 24.2% for the afternoon window. That is 54 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 276 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DTW to FLL through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 91.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 56.8%, a spread of 26 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on DTW to FLL runs when it is late
The 202 late arrivals split 48 under half an hour, 70 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 84 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early142 flights23.3%
- Within 15 min265 flights43.5%
- 15–29 min late48 flights7.9%
- 30–59 min late70 flights11.5%
- 1–2 hours late60 flights9.9%
- 2+ hours late24 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 609 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
29 of 169 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 62 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FLL.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on DTW to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 8 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 8 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 April 2026 | 7 hours 49 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 December 2025 | 5 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 April 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 March 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
43% 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 5,950 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,817 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.17%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
13.8% 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 1,127 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 58.3% on time across 640 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 630 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 FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.17% 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. 609 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to DTW, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on DTW to FLL77.2%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to FLL73.6%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to FLL59.7%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.