Carrier route record
NKFLL→MSY
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans
- Flights
- 604
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- 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 MSY sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 604 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 368 at 66.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to MSY runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 584 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on FLL to MSY, 1,398 flights
These figures cover 604 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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 MSY
Spirit flew 604 of the 1,398 flights on FLL to MSY, about 43% of it. Its 73.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 73.6% to JetBlue at 60.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 66.6% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 60.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 426 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 604 | 73.6% | 63 min | 3.31% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 368 | 66.6% | 44 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 426 | 60.0% | 67 min | 1.64% | D |
Southwest leads JetBlue by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 26 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am212 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am22 flights—
- 11am–2pm15 flights—
- 2pm–5pm10 flights—
- 5pm–8pm150 flights70.1%
- 8pm–5am195 flights61.5%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 87.1% 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 212 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 93.9% in July. 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 82.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.0%. 13 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 9,708 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
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 4,427 of the 9,708 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,708 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 87.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.31%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.1% 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 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. 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 78.8% on time across 604 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 604 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 3.31% 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. 584 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 MSY66.6%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to MSY60.0%
- 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
- 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.