Carrier route record
NKFLL→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Detroit
- Flights
- 813
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- 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 DTW 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 813 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to DTW runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 152 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 789 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on FLL to DTW, 2,719 flights
These figures cover 813 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.4% 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 DTW
Spirit flew 813 of the 2,719 flights on FLL to DTW, about 30% of it. Its 62.4% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.3% to Frontier at 46.4%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,817 | 79.3% | 75 min | 1.27% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 813 | 62.4% | 75 min | 2.58% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 46.4% | 91 min | 5.62% | 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 39 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–8am259 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm73 flights49.3%
- 2pm–5pm47 flights46.7%
- 5pm–8pm123 flights47.1%
- 8pm–5am295 flights51.4%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.5% of the time, against 46.7% for the afternoon window. That is 39 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 295 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 76.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 48.7%. 28 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 46% of the 22,000 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.
- 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. 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 10,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 22,306 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 85.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.58%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 17.4% 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 1,127 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. 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 70.0% on time across 802 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 813 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: treat all of this as provisional. 813 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 62.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 789 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 DTW79.3%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.