Carrier route record
NKIAH→LGA
Spirit Airlines · Houston to New York
- Flights
- 297
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on IAH to LGA 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 297 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,342 at 77.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on IAH to LGA runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 170 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 279 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.6%
Every carrier on IAH to LGA, 4,053 flights
These figures cover 297 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.9% 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 IAH to LGA
Spirit flew 297 of the 4,053 flights on IAH to LGA, about 7% of it. Its 60.6% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 83.9% to Spirit at 60.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 32 | 83.9% | 40 min | 3.12% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,342 | 77.2% | 95 min | 3.95% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,382 | 71.4% | 75 min | 1.64% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 297 | 60.6% | 80 min | 6.06% | D− |
Delta Air Lines cancels 4.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 14 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm79 flights70.9%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm202 flights57.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.3% on time, against 70.9% for the 11am–2pm 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 202 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on IAH to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202591 flights66.7%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights54.5%
- Jan–Mar 202687 flights60.8%
- Apr–Jun 202629 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 70%. 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 60.6% on time across 297 flights.
Spirit on IAH to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 66.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 54.5%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 99 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 45.9%. 33 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. National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 8,790 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.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% 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 5,000 minutes out of 8,790, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,790 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.06%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 17.9% 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 1,416 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 79.8% on time across 304 flights, 19 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 19 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 297 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 IAH to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.06% 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. 279 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to LGA, every carrier
- Spirit on LGA to IAH, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on IAH to LGA77.2%
- United Airlines on IAH to LGA71.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.