Carrier route record

NKFLL→CLE

Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Cleveland

Flights: 233
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 20%
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 CLE draws a C−. 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 233 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 506 at 91.4% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to CLE runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 106 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 224 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.8%

Every carrier on FLL to CLE, 1,164 flights

These figures cover 233 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CLE

Spirit flew 233 of the 1,164 flights on FLL to CLE, about 20% of it. Its 67.0% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 91.4% to Spirit at 67.0%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 91.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 425 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on FLL to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	506	91.4%	99 min	0.99%	A+
Frontier Airlines	425	70.2%	95 min	2.12%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	233	67.0%	64 min	3.86%	C−

The spread between United and Frontier is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 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 33 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am28 flights—
8am–11am38 flights89.5%
11am–2pm5 flights—
2pm–5pm136 flights56.6%
5pm–8pm9 flights—
8pm–5am17 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.5% of the time, against 56.6% for the afternoon window. That is 33 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 136 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on FLL to CLE through the year

Jul–Sep 202569 flights75.4%
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 67.0% on time across 233 flights.

Spirit on FLL to CLE did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.4% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 58.3%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 78 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.3%. 21 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 44% of the 4,723 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.

Carrier
44%
National Airspace System
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
20%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 2,076 of the 4,723 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,723 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 3.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 9.8% 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 1,062 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. 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 runs 68.6% on time across 232 flights, within 2 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. 233 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 3.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 224 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures