Carrier route record
NKFLL→RDU
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Raleigh
- Flights
- 201
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- 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 RDU draws a C−. About 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 201 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to RDU runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 115 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 192 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.3%
Every carrier on FLL to RDU, 1,318 flights
These figures cover 201 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.6% 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 RDU
Spirit flew 201 of the 1,318 flights on FLL to RDU, about 15% of it. Its 66.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 74.4% to Southwest at 64.2%. 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 | 74.4% | 104 min | 1.10% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 66.7% | 50 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 567 | 66.2% | 64 min | 1.41% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 201 | 66.1% | 77 min | 4.48% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 64.2% | 52 min | 2.84% | 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 10 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–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm70 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm74 flights55.1%
- 5pm–8pm30 flights63.3%
- 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 55.1%. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 74 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to RDU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202560 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 202556 flights79.6%
- Jan–Mar 202663 flights38.6%
- Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Scale runs 30% to 90%. 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 66.1% on time across 201 flights.
Spirit on FLL to RDU did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 38.6%, a swing of 45 points on roughly 67 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.9%. 17 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 4,978 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 4,978 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 4,978 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 1,735 of the 4,978 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.48%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.6% 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 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. 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 67.0% on time across 201 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. 201 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 4.48% 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. 192 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 RDU74.4%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to RDU66.2%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to RDU64.2%
- 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
- 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.