Carrier route record
NKFLL→PIT
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 471
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- 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 PIT 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 471 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to PIT runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 67 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 450 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.7%
Every carrier on FLL to PIT, 1,109 flights
These figures cover 471 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 PIT
Spirit flew 471 of the 1,109 flights on FLL to PIT, about 42% of it. Its 70.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 70.9% to JetBlue at 57.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 471 | 70.9% | 69 min | 4.25% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 396 | 67.4% | 57 min | 0.76% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 242 | 57.6% | 81 min | 1.65% | D |
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 24 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–8am97 flights85.7%
- 8am–11am7 flights—
- 11am–2pm9 flights—
- 2pm–5pm55 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm58 flights61.5%
- 8pm–5am245 flights66.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 85.7% 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 245 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to PIT through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 50.0%. July is the strongest month at 85.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 35 points. January was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.4%. 29 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 44% of the 9,042 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 3,997 of the 9,042 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,042 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 85.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.25%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.0% 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 994 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 79.1% on time across 469 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. 471 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 PIT
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.25% 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. 450 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to PIT, every carrier
- Spirit on PIT to FLL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to PIT67.4%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to PIT57.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.