Carrier route record
NKDTW→LGA
Spirit Airlines · Detroit to New York
- Flights
- 999
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- 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 LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 7.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 999 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,979 at 77.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on DTW to LGA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 922 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.4%
Every carrier on DTW to LGA, 4,011 flights
These figures cover 999 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 LGA
Spirit flew 999 of the 4,011 flights on DTW to LGA, about 25% of it. Its 69.6% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.3% to Spirit at 69.6%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,979 | 77.3% | 69 min | 3.49% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,033 | 77.0% | 82 min | 5.81% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 999 | 69.6% | 77 min | 7.61% | 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.
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 19 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–8am132 flights77.6%
- 8am–11am244 flights80.7%
- 11am–2pm44 flights63.4%
- 2pm–5pm192 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm175 flights61.7%
- 8pm–5am212 flights61.4%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 80.7% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 244 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DTW to LGA through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 59.0%. August is the strongest month at 86.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 28 points. 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 58.7%. 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. National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 21,000 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.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 12,000 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 21,489 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 7.61%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 75.1% on time across 998 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 999 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 7.61% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 922 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
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to LGA77.3%
- Republic Airways on DTW to LGA77.0%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.