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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

NKLAX→ATL

Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to Atlanta

Flights
167
Period
September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route
3%
Carriers
4
A+GRADE

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

Spirit on LAX to ATL 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 167 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,811 at 80.8% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's LAX to ATL record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

Key figures

On time

85.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 166 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.60%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

78.6%

Every carrier on LAX to ATL, 4,843 flights

These figures cover 167 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on LAX to ATL

Spirit flew 167 of the 4,843 flights on LAX to ATL, about 3% of it. Its 85.5% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 85.5% to American at 66.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 80.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 376 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to ATL
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample16785.5%68 min0.60%A+
Delta Air Lines3,81180.8%66 min0.84%B+
Frontier Airlines48968.2%65 min1.64%C
American Airlines37666.5%84 min0.53%C+

The spread between Delta and American is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 13 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier.

  • 5am–8am46 flights93.3%
  • 8am–11am18 flights—
  • 11am–2pm31 flights80.6%
  • 2pm–5pm—
  • 5pm–8pm—
  • 8pm–5am72 flights90.3%

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 80.6% 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 72 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LAX to ATL through the year

  • Jul–Sep 202557 flights91.2%
  • Oct–Dec 2025104 flights82.5%
  • Jan–Mar 20266 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 85.5% on time across 167 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on LAX to ATL logged 57 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 85.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on LAX to ATL runs when it is late

Spirit on LAX to ATL often beats the schedule: 65 of 166 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 24 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 8 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 5 an hour or more.

  • 15+ min early65 flights39.2%
  • Within 15 min77 flights46.4%
  • 15–29 min late11 flights6.6%
  • 30–59 min late8 flights4.8%
  • 1–2 hours late1 flights0.6%
  • 2+ hours late4 flights2.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 166 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 28 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 10 still arrived on time. 6 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on LAX to ATL

The latest arrival of the period was on 21 September 2025, 7 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in September 2025.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on LAX to ATL in the period
DateArrived late byLargest filed cause
21 September 20257 hours 15 minutesCarrier
4 November 20254 hours 49 minutesLate-arriving aircraft
5 September 20252 hours 36 minutesCarrier
22 September 20252 hours 14 minutesCarrier
22 November 20251 hour 8 minutesCarrier

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 60% of the 1,633 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

  • Carrier
    60%
  • Late-arriving aircraft
    24%
  • National Airspace System
    15%
  • Security
    1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 984 of the 1,633 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,633 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, below the national 1.89% 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 3.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.9% on time across 167 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 167 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. 167 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 85.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 166 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.