Carrier route record
NKFLL→ORD
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Chicago
- Flights
- 913
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 913 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,479 at 74.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to ORD runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 163 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 881 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.1%
Every carrier on FLL to ORD, 3,422 flights
These figures cover 913 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% 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 ORD
Spirit flew 913 of the 3,422 flights on FLL to ORD, about 27% of it. Its 61.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 74.7% to Southwest at 38.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,479 | 74.7% | 81 min | 0.74% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 846 | 70.0% | 103 min | 1.54% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 913 | 61.3% | 73 min | 3.29% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 151 | 61.1% | 148 min | 3.31% | D− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 38.7% | 98 min | 3.03% | F− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 74.7%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 41 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am81 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am208 flights74.5%
- 11am–2pm13 flights—
- 2pm–5pm152 flights47.9%
- 5pm–8pm163 flights48.7%
- 8pm–5am296 flights56.5%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.9% of the time, against 47.9% for the afternoon window. That is 41 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 296 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to ORD through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 25.4%. August is the strongest month at 85.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 60 points. March was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 73.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 52.4%. 21 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. National Airspace System accounts for 47% of the 25,000 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.
- 47%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 12,000 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 25,001 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.29%, 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. 16.7% 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 1,182 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 65.3% on time across 916 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 913 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 ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.29% 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. 881 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to ORD, every carrier
- Spirit on ORD to FLL, the return leg
- United Airlines on FLL to ORD74.7%
- American Airlines on FLL to ORD70.0%
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to ORD61.1%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.