Carrier route record
NKFLL→ATL
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,343
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to ATL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,343 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 4,268 at 78.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.9% on time across 4,268 flights.
Key figures
On time
60.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,295 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.8%
Every carrier on FLL to ATL, 7,185 flights
These figures cover 1,343 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% 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 FLL to ATL
Spirit flew 1,343 of the 7,185 flights on FLL to ATL, about 19% of it. Its 60.7% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.9% to JetBlue at 56.9%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.9% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 56.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 647 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 4,268 | 78.9% | 74 min | 1.66% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 927 | 65.0% | 85 min | 2.80% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 1,343 | 60.7% | 67 min | 3.43% | D− |
| JetBlue Airways | 647 | 56.9% | 64 min | 2.94% | D |
The spread between Delta and JetBlue is 22 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 22 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 39 points, against 22 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am60 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am281 flights74.6%
- 11am–2pm198 flights68.0%
- 2pm–5pm142 flights53.7%
- 5pm–8pm397 flights50.8%
- 8pm–5am265 flights52.2%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.8% on time, against 90.0% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 397 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to ATL through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 82.0% 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 155 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 47.2%. 27 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 34,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 14,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 34,210 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.43%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.7% 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 581 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 66.0% on time across 1,341 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,343 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Spirit on FLL to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.43% 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. 1,295 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to ATL, every carrier
- Spirit on ATL to FLL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on FLL to ATL78.9%
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to ATL65.0%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to ATL56.9%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.