Carrier route record
NKFLL→PHL
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 709
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to PHL 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 709 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,449 at 77.6% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.6% on time across 1,449 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 674 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on FLL to PHL, 3,410 flights
These figures cover 709 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 PHL
Spirit flew 709 of the 3,410 flights on FLL to PHL, about 21% of it. Its 70.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 77.6% to Frontier at 64.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 77.6% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 577 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,449 | 77.6% | 114 min | 2.76% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 675 | 73.8% | 66 min | 1.78% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 709 | 70.6% | 72 min | 4.80% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 577 | 64.5% | 107 min | 2.60% | D |
The spread between American and Frontier 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.
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 37 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am219 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am20 flights—
- 11am–2pm45 flights72.1%
- 2pm–5pm14 flights—
- 5pm–8pm111 flights53.4%
- 8pm–5am300 flights59.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.4% on time, against 90.6% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 300 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to PHL through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 90.2% 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.8%. 28 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
33% 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 4,633 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,208 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 5,805 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 12.6% 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 993 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 runs 69.5% on time across 709 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 709 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 PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.80% 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. 674 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to PHL, every carrier
- Spirit on PHL to FLL, the return leg
- American Airlines on FLL to PHL77.6%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to PHL73.8%
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to PHL64.5%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.