Carrier route record

NKDTW→RSW

Spirit Airlines · Detroit to Fort Myers

Flights: 337
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 19%
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 RSW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 337 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on DTW to RSW runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 318 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.64%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

74.5%

Every carrier on DTW to RSW, 1,774 flights

These figures cover 337 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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 RSW

Spirit flew 337 of the 1,774 flights on DTW to RSW, about 19% of it. Its 71.7% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 75.4% to Frontier at 71.2%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to RSW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,357	75.4%	69 min	1.18%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	337	71.7%	58 min	5.64%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	80	71.2%	74 min	0.00%	C+

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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am34 flights97.1%
8am–11am130 flights73.9%
11am–2pm47 flights65.9%
2pm–5pm73 flights61.4%
5pm–8pm53 flights68.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.1% of the time, against 61.4% for the afternoon window. That is 36 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 130 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DTW to RSW through the year

Jul–Sep 202519 flights—
Oct–Dec 202589 flights87.4%
Jan–Mar 2026187 flights64.9%
Apr–Jun 202642 flights53.7%

Scale runs 45% to 95%. 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 71.7% on time across 337 flights.

Spirit on DTW to RSW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 87.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 53.7%, a swing of 34 points on roughly 112 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%, a spread of 24 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on DTW to RSW runs when it is late

Spirit on DTW to RSW often beats the schedule: 94 of 318 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 90 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 44 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.

15+ min early94 flights29.6%
Within 15 min134 flights42.1%
15–29 min late19 flights6.0%
30–59 min late44 flights13.8%
1–2 hours late20 flights6.3%
2+ hours late7 flights2.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 318 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

14 of 79 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 25 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 RSW.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on DTW to RSW

The latest arrival of the period was on 7 March 2026, 4 hours 34 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on DTW to RSW in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
7 March 2026	4 hours 34 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
7 December 2025	3 hours	Carrier
18 March 2026	2 hours 57 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 March 2026	2 hours 52 minutes	Carrier
8 April 2026	2 hours 46 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 5,182 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
24%
Security
0%
Extreme weather
0%

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 2,237 minutes out of 5,182, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,182 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 97.1% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.64%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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

8.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 1,084 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 67.1% on time across 335 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 337 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 RSW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.64% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 318 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures