Carrier route record

NKLAS→ORD

Spirit Airlines · Las Vegas to Chicago

Flights: 266
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on LAS to ORD lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 266 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,330 at 79.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's LAS to ORD record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 262 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.50%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.5%

Every carrier on LAS to ORD, 5,297 flights

These figures cover 266 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 ORD

Spirit flew 266 of the 5,297 flights on LAS to ORD, about 5% of it. Its 83.6% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.6% to Southwest at 66.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 66.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 669 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAS to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	266	83.6%	54 min	1.50%	B
United Airlines	2,330	79.3%	71 min	0.43%	B+
American Airlines	1,848	76.2%	99 min	2.27%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	184	68.6%	88 min	4.35%	C−
Southwest Airlines	669	66.6%	58 min	0.30%	C+

The spread between United and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am53 flights92.5%
8am–11am35 flights82.9%
11am–2pm31 flights77.4%
2pm–5pm36 flights86.1%
5pm–8pm15 flights—
8pm–5am96 flights82.6%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 77.4% on time against 92.5% for 5am–8am. 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 96 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LAS to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025197 flights83.8%
Oct–Dec 202565 flights82.0%
Apr–Jun 20264 flights—

Scale runs 75% 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 83.6% on time across 266 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on LAS to ORD logged 197 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 65 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 4 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.3%. 22 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 50% of the 2,333 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.

National Airspace System
50%
Carrier
27%
Late-arriving aircraft
21%
Extreme weather
2%

50% 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 1,167 minutes out of 2,333, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,333 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.0% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,514 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg runs 83.7% on time across 261 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. 266 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 ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 266 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 83.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 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