Carrier route record

NKLAS→MCI

Spirit Airlines · Las Vegas to Kansas City

Flights: 271
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
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 MCI earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 271 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's LAS to MCI record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 262 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.95%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.6%

Every carrier on LAS to MCI, 1,978 flights

These figures cover 271 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 LAS to MCI

Spirit flew 271 of the 1,978 flights on LAS to MCI, about 14% of it. Its 86.3% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Southwest at 75.1%. 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 LAS to MCI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	2	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	271	86.3%	65 min	2.95%	A
Southwest Airlines	1,705	75.1%	47 min	0.23%	B+

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 271 flights.

5am–8am15 flights—
8am–11am84 flights88.0%
11am–2pm71 flights83.3%
2pm–5pm22 flights—
5pm–8pm79 flights81.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 88.0% on time for the 8am–11am window against 81.6% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 84 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LAS to MCI through the year

Jul–Sep 202568 flights82.1%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights92.3%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights82.1%
Apr–Jun 202623 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 86.3% on time across 271 flights.

Spirit on LAS to MCI did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 92.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.1%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 90 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.5%. 14 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 2,336 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
26%
Extreme weather
0%

37% 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 2,336 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 2,336 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 843 of the 2,336 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.95%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,139 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 85.7% on time across 273 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. 271 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 MCI

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 262 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