Carrier route record

NKIND→FLL

Spirit Airlines · Indianapolis to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 372
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 36%
Carriers: 4

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

Spirit on IND to FLL lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 372 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on IND to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights

Avg delay

105 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.49%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.2%

Every carrier on IND to FLL, 1,044 flights

These figures cover 372 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 IND to FLL

Spirit flew 372 of the 1,044 flights on IND to FLL, about 36% of it. Its 80.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.4% to Allegiant at 67.4%. Two 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 IND to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	417	82.4%	41 min	0.72%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)	372	80.5%	105 min	3.49%	B−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	23	71.4%	31 min	8.70%	C−
Allegiant Airthin sample	232	67.4%	68 min	1.29%	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 28 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–8am179 flights90.0%
8am–11am4 flights—
11am–2pm47 flights67.4%
2pm–5pm8 flights—
5pm–8pm66 flights81.5%
8pm–5am68 flights62.1%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 90.0% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 179 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on IND to FLL through the year

Jul–Sep 2025111 flights83.6%
Oct–Dec 202594 flights84.0%
Jan–Mar 2026141 flights72.7%
Apr–Jun 202626 flights—

Scale runs 65% 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 80.5% on time across 372 flights.

Spirit on IND to FLL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 84.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 72.7%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 124 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.2%. 29 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 7,358 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Carrier
26%
Extreme weather
3%

35% 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 7,358 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 7,358 reported delay minutes.

36% 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 2,657 minutes out of 7,358, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.49%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 10.6% 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 1,005 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 70.7% on time across 372 flights, 10 points below 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 372 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 IND to FLL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.49% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 359 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