Carrier route record
NKFLL→RDU
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Raleigh
- Flights
- 158
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to RDU draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 158 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on FLL to RDU runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 169 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 149 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
67.9%
Every carrier on FLL to RDU, 1,402 flights
These figures cover 158 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on FLL to RDU
Spirit flew 158 of the 1,402 flights on FLL to RDU, about 11% of it. Its 60.4% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 75.0% to Southwest at 59.4%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 364 | 75.0% | 92 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 668 | 67.6% | 67 min | 2.40% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 70 | 67.6% | 97 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 158 | 60.4% | 74 min | 5.70% | D− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 142 | 59.4% | 52 min | 2.82% | D |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm70 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm60 flights52.7%
- 5pm–8pm25 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 65.2% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 52.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 70 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to RDU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202556 flights79.6%
- Jan–Mar 202663 flights38.6%
- Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 60.4% on time across 158 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on FLL to RDU logged 17 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 56 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 63 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 22 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 60.4% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 67.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.3%, a spread of 6 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on FLL to RDU runs when it is late
The 59 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early22 flights14.8%
- Within 15 min68 flights45.6%
- 15–29 min late18 flights12.1%
- 30–59 min late14 flights9.4%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights12.1%
- 2+ hours late9 flights6.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 149 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 65 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 5 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on FLL to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 March 2026, 4 hours 17 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 March 2026 | 4 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 September 2025 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 December 2025 | 3 hours 39 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 March 2026 | 3 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 3 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 4,340 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,501 of the 4,340 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,340 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.70%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
18.1% 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 680 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 runs 62.8% on time across 158 flights, within 2 points 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. 158 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.70% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 149 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to RDU, every carrier
- Spirit on RDU to FLL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on FLL to RDU75.0%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to RDU67.6%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to RDU59.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.