Carrier route record
NKFLL→CMH
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Columbus
- Flights
- 432
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- 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 CMH 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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 432 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to CMH runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 414 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.7%
Every carrier on FLL to CMH, 837 flights
These figures cover 432 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 CMH
Spirit flew 432 of the 837 flights on FLL to CMH, most of the route. Its 72.0% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 64.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 72.0% to Frontier at 38.9%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 432 | 72.0% | 62 min | 3.94% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 385 | 58.0% | 52 min | 1.30% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 38.9% | 133 min | 10.00% | F− |
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am65 flights81.4%
- 8am–11am99 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm32 flights56.2%
- 5pm–8pm60 flights68.3%
- 8pm–5am175 flights63.6%
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 87.6% of the time, against 56.2% for the afternoon window. That is 31 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 175 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to CMH through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025153 flights80.8%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights71.2%
- Jan–Mar 2026159 flights63.6%
- Apr–Jun 202640 flights70.0%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 72.0% on time across 432 flights.
Spirit on FLL to CMH did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 63.6%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 108 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.7%. 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 7,166 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%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 2,909 of the 7,166 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,166 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.94%, 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. 9.7% 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 973 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 78.3% on time across 430 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. 432 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 CMH
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.94% 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. 414 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to CMH, every carrier
- Spirit on CMH to FLL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to CMH58.0%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.