Carrier route record
NKFLL→RIC
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Richmond
- Flights
- 258
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to RIC draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 258 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on FLL to RIC 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 248 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.8%
Every carrier on FLL to RIC, 810 flights
These figures cover 258 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.7% 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 RIC
Spirit flew 258 of the 810 flights on FLL to RIC, about 32% of it. Its 66.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 65.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 66.1% to JetBlue at 65.7%.
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)thin sample | 258 | 66.1% | 85 min | 3.88% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 552 | 65.7% | 59 min | 2.36% | C |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am31 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am40 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm40 flights70.0%
- 5pm–8pm136 flights56.3%
- 8pm–5am6 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.3% on time, against 93.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 136 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to RIC through the year
- Jul–Sep 202567 flights74.6%
- Oct–Dec 202582 flights76.8%
- Jan–Mar 202679 flights50.0%
- Apr–Jun 202630 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. 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 258 flights.
Spirit on FLL to RIC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 86 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 75.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 56.8%. 19 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 45% of the 7,133 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 3,226 of the 7,133 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,133 reported delay minutes.
32% 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 2,313 minutes out of 7,133, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.88%, 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. 17.7% 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 806 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 64.8% on time across 258 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. 258 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 RIC
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.88% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 248 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.