Carrier route record
NKFLL→AUS
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Austin
- Flights
- 374
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to AUS draws a D−. Roughly 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 374 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 372 at 73.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to AUS runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 160 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
60.7%
Every carrier on FLL to AUS, 1,116 flights
These figures cover 374 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.9% 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 AUS
Spirit flew 374 of the 1,116 flights on FLL to AUS, about 34% of it. Its 61.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 60.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 73.0% to JetBlue at 47.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 73.0% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 47.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 370 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 372 | 73.0% | 55 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 374 | 61.6% | 70 min | 6.68% | D− |
| JetBlue Airways | 370 | 47.3% | 58 min | 0.81% | F+ |
The spread between Southwest and JetBlue is 26 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 26 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 30 points, against 26 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am45 flights75.6%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm50 flights45.8%
- 5pm–8pm85 flights61.6%
- 8pm–5am186 flights63.4%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 75.6% of the time, against 45.8% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 186 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to AUS through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.7% 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 58 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 44.2%. 34 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. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 9,388 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 4,013 of the 9,388 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,388 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.68%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 16.9% 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 1,105 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 68.1% on time across 375 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. 374 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 FLL to AUS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.68% 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. 349 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to AUS, every carrier
- Spirit on AUS to FLL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to AUS73.0%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to AUS47.3%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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.