Carrier route record

NKLAX→ATL

Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to Atlanta

Flights: 270
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

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

Spirit on LAX to ATL earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 270 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,844 at 81.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's LAX to ATL record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 268 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.74%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.4%

Every carrier on LAX to ATL, 5,013 flights

These figures cover 270 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 LAX to ATL

Spirit flew 270 of the 5,013 flights on LAX to ATL, about 5% of it. Its 84.7% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 84.7% to Frontier at 60.1%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.5% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 60.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 520 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	270	84.7%	67 min	0.74%	B+
Delta Air Lines	3,844	81.5%	64 min	0.86%	B+
American Airlines	379	66.8%	85 min	0.53%	C+
Frontier Airlines	520	60.1%	69 min	1.73%	D

The spread between Delta and Frontier is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 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 12 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am46 flights93.3%
8am–11am59 flights83.1%
11am–2pm38 flights81.6%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am127 flights83.3%

Scale runs 75% 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 81.6% on time against 93.3% 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 127 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LAX to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 2025160 flights86.2%
Oct–Dec 2025104 flights82.5%
Jan–Mar 20266 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 84.7% on time across 270 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on LAX to ATL logged 160 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 104 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 6 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 84.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.5%. 15 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. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 2,748 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.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
17%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 1,382 of the 2,748 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,748 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.3% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.74%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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.

At 1,947 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 271 flights, within about 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. 270 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 LAX to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 270 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 268 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