Carrier route record

NKIAH→TPA

Spirit Airlines · Houston to Tampa

Flights: 143
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on IAH to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 143 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on IAH to TPA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 143 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.6%

Every carrier on IAH to TPA, 1,643 flights

These figures cover 143 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on IAH to TPA

Spirit flew 143 of the 1,643 flights on IAH to TPA, about 9% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.6% to Frontier at 70.9%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on IAH to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,363	83.6%	66 min	0.37%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	143	72.7%	58 min	0.00%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	137	70.9%	129 min	2.19%	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 15 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–8am14 flights—
8am–11am25 flights—
11am–2pm39 flights64.1%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm39 flights79.5%
8pm–5am26 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 64.1% on time against 79.5% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 39 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on IAH to TPA through the year

Jul–Sep 202583 flights68.7%
Oct–Dec 202553 flights77.4%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—

Scale runs 60% 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 72.7% on time across 143 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on IAH to TPA logged 83 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 53 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 72.7% annual figure is the one to use.

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 2,267 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
41%
Carrier
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
2%

41% 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 920 minutes out of 2,267, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,267 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 787 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 73.2% on time across 151 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. 143 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 TPA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 143 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 143 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures