Carrier route record
NKFLL→CLE
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Cleveland
- Flights
- 186
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to CLE draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 186 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 551 at 89.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on FLL to CLE runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 135 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 177 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.2%
Every carrier on FLL to CLE, 1,306 flights
These figures cover 186 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 FLL to CLE
Spirit flew 186 of the 1,306 flights on FLL to CLE, about 14% of it. Its 63.8% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.0% to JetBlue at 60.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 89.0% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 514 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 551 | 89.0% | 74 min | 0.91% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 514 | 70.6% | 89 min | 3.31% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 186 | 63.8% | 62 min | 4.84% | D− |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 55 | 60.8% | 66 min | 7.27% | D− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.3% 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 186 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's FLL to CLE record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 63.8% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to CLE through the year
- Jul–Sep 202522 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202573 flights72.6%
- Jan–Mar 202679 flights58.3%
- Apr–Jun 202612 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 63.8% on time across 186 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on FLL to CLE logged 22 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 73 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 79 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 12 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 63.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 63.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on FLL to CLE runs when it is late
The 64 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 25 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early42 flights23.7%
- Within 15 min71 flights40.1%
- 15–29 min late20 flights11.3%
- 30–59 min late25 flights14.1%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights6.8%
- 2+ hours late7 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 177 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 71 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 5 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on FLL to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 February 2026, 4 hours behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across February, September and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 February 2026 | 4 hours | Carrier |
| 21 September 2025 | 3 hours 34 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 February 2026 | 3 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 March 2026 | 2 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 September 2025 | 2 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 3,982 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,656 of the 3,982 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,982 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.84%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
10.7% 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 1,062 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 runs 66.7% on time across 185 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 186 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 CLE
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 177 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to CLE, every carrier
- Spirit on CLE to FLL, the return leg
- United Airlines on FLL to CLE89.0%
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to CLE70.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.