Carrier route record

NKLAS→DFW

Spirit Airlines · Las Vegas to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 373
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on LAS to DFW lands a B, 2 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 373 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 3,987 at 80.3% on time.

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

On time

79.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 366 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.07%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on LAS to DFW, 5,173 flights

These figures cover 373 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 LAS to DFW

Spirit flew 373 of the 5,173 flights on LAS to DFW, about 7% of it. Its 79.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 80.3% to Spirit at 79.8%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAS to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	3,987	80.3%	104 min	3.19%	B−
Frontier Airlines	813	79.9%	85 min	1.97%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)	373	79.8%	78 min	1.07%	B

American Airlines cancels 3.2% 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 16 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–8am38 flights78.9%
8am–11am30 flights90.0%
11am–2pm156 flights82.9%
2pm–5pm84 flights74.1%
5pm–8pm64 flights75.0%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 74.1% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 156 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LAS to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 2025145 flights75.2%
Oct–Dec 2025115 flights86.8%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights77.9%
Apr–Jun 202625 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 79.8% on time across 373 flights.

Spirit on LAS to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 86.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.2%, a swing of 12 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.9%. 22 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 5,741 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

41% 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 5,741 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 5,741 reported delay minutes.

35% 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 2,008 minutes out of 5,741, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.80%.

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. 9.3% 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 1,055 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 78.2% on time across 368 flights, within 2 points 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. 373 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 LAS to DFW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 373 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 79.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 366 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