Carrier route record
NKFLL→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Detroit
- Flights
- 640
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- 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 DTW draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two 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 640 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on FLL to DTW runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 190 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
58.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 617 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.28%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on FLL to DTW, 2,705 flights
These figures cover 640 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on FLL to DTW
Spirit flew 640 of the 2,705 flights on FLL to DTW, about 24% of it. Its 58.3% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.6% to Frontier at 55.6%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,810 | 78.6% | 70 min | 1.55% | B |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 108 | 69.2% | 71 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 640 | 58.3% | 74 min | 3.28% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 147 | 55.6% | 81 min | 3.40% | D− |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 64 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am199 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm39 flights17.6%
- 2pm–5pm32 flights43.3%
- 5pm–8pm123 flights47.1%
- 8pm–5am231 flights49.1%
Scale runs 10% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 17.6% on time against 81.6% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 231 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to DTW through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 83.3% 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 113 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 72.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 38.4%, a spread of 34 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on FLL to DTW runs when it is late
The 257 late arrivals split 54 under half an hour, 85 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 118 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early98 flights15.9%
- Within 15 min262 flights42.5%
- 15–29 min late54 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late85 flights13.8%
- 1–2 hours late74 flights12.0%
- 2+ hours late44 flights7.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 617 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 266 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 29 made it up before arrival. 20 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on FLL to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 April 2026, 5 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across April, March, December and November, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 April 2026 | 5 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 March 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 15 December 2025 | 4 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 November 2025 | 4 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,811 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,076 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 81.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.28%, against 1.89% 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
19.1% 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 1,127 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.8% on time across 630 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 640 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 DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.28% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 617 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to FLL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on FLL to DTW78.6%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to DTW69.2%
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to DTW55.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.