Carrier route record
NKDTW→LGA
Spirit Airlines · Detroit to New York
- Flights
- 829
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DTW to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 8.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 829 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,052 at 76.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on DTW to LGA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 94 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 760 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on DTW to LGA, 3,862 flights
These figures cover 829 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on DTW to LGA
Spirit flew 829 of the 3,862 flights on DTW to LGA, about 21% of it. Its 67.9% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.8% to Spirit at 67.9%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,052 | 76.8% | 80 min | 5.80% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,981 | 76.4% | 74 min | 4.04% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 829 | 67.9% | 76 min | 8.32% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.8% 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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am131 flights77.4%
- 8am–11am175 flights77.0%
- 11am–2pm43 flights62.5%
- 2pm–5pm149 flights64.7%
- 5pm–8pm126 flights61.2%
- 8pm–5am205 flights61.7%
Scale runs 55% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.2% on time, against 77.4% for the 5am–8am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 205 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DTW to LGA through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 77.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.2%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on DTW to LGA runs when it is late
Spirit on DTW to LGA often beats the schedule: 246 of 760 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 244 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 74 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 112 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early246 flights32.4%
- Within 15 min270 flights35.5%
- 15–29 min late58 flights7.6%
- 30–59 min late74 flights9.7%
- 1–2 hours late69 flights9.1%
- 2+ hours late43 flights5.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 760 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
28 of 232 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 40 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 LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on DTW to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 September 2025, 5 hours 37 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2025 | 5 hours 37 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 September 2025 | 5 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 January 2026 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 February 2026 | 4 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 February 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%National Airspace System
- 35%Carrier
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,440 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 18,521 reported delay minutes.
53% 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 9,727 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 8.32%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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
14.7% 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 502 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 72.1% on time across 827 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 829 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 LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.32% 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. 760 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to LGA, every carrier
- Spirit on LGA to DTW, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DTW to LGA76.8%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to LGA76.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.