Carrier route record
NKFLL→MSY
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans
- Flights
- 488
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to MSY sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 488 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 365 at 66.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on FLL to MSY runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 74 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 468 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
62.8%
Every carrier on FLL to MSY, 1,403 flights
These figures cover 488 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 MSY
Spirit flew 488 of the 1,403 flights on FLL to MSY, about 35% of it. Its 69.9% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 62.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 69.9% to JetBlue at 54.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 66.8% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 54.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 550 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 488 | 69.9% | 62 min | 4.10% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 66.8% | 47 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 550 | 54.0% | 70 min | 1.82% | F |
The spread between Southwest and JetBlue is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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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 27 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am175 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am22 flights—
- 11am–2pm14 flights—
- 2pm–5pm10 flights—
- 5pm–8pm96 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am171 flights58.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 84.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 175 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to MSY through the year
January is the weak month at 58.2% on time, against 81.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 77 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.4%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on FLL to MSY runs when it is late
The 141 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 42 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 58 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early115 flights24.6%
- Within 15 min212 flights45.3%
- 15–29 min late41 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late42 flights9.0%
- 1–2 hours late44 flights9.4%
- 2+ hours late14 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 468 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
22 of 154 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. Only 9 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on FLL to MSY
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 March 2026, 5 hours 37 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 March 2026 | 5 hours 37 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 5 January 2026 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 February 2026 | 3 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 March 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 February 2026 | 2 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 8,783 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,107 of the 8,783 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,783 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.10%, against 1.89% 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
12.4% 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 673 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 77.5% on time across 492 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. 488 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 MSY
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.10% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 468 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to MSY, every carrier
- Spirit on MSY to FLL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to MSY66.8%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to MSY54.0%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.