Carrier route record
NKFLL→RIC
Spirit Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Richmond
- Flights
- 208
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on FLL to RIC draws a D−. Roughly 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 208 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on FLL to RIC runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 142 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 198 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
64.6%
Every carrier on FLL to RIC, 809 flights
These figures cover 208 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.7% 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 RIC
Spirit flew 208 of the 809 flights on FLL to RIC, about 26% of it. Its 63.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 65.1% to Spirit at 63.1%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 601 | 65.1% | 58 min | 2.66% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 208 | 63.1% | 88 min | 4.81% | 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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am40 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm29 flights—
- 5pm–8pm127 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am6 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 80.0% for the 8am–11am 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 127 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on FLL to RIC through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- 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 63.1% on time across 208 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on FLL to RIC logged 17 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 82 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 79 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 30 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 63.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 72.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 52.9%, a spread of 20 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on FLL to RIC runs when it is late
When Spirit on FLL to RIC is late it tends to be very late: 39 of its 73 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 17 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early26 flights13.1%
- Within 15 min99 flights50.0%
- 15–29 min late16 flights8.1%
- 30–59 min late18 flights9.1%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights11.1%
- 2+ hours late17 flights8.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 198 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 71 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on FLL to RIC
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 April 2026, 6 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 April 2026 | 6 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 April 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 September 2025 | 4 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 3 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 17 February 2026 | 3 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 6,423 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,131 of the 6,423 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,423 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.81%, against 1.89% 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
19.7% 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 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.
The return leg runs 62.9% on time across 208 flights, within half 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. 208 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 4.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 198 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.