Carrier route record
NKLAX→DFW
Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 383
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on LAX to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 383 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 757 at 85.4% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 85.4% on time across 757 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 366 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.18%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on LAX to DFW, 6,178 flights
These figures cover 383 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on LAX to DFW
Spirit flew 383 of the 6,178 flights on LAX to DFW, about 6% of it. Its 70.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.4% to Spirit at 70.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 85.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 72.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 510 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 757 | 85.4% | 75 min | 1.45% | A |
| American Airlines | 4,528 | 73.7% | 80 min | 2.23% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 510 | 72.6% | 88 min | 1.76% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 383 | 70.8% | 59 min | 4.18% | C− |
The spread between Delta and Frontier 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.
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 12 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am50 flights80.0%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm71 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm84 flights73.5%
- 8pm–5am177 flights67.7%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 80.0% of the time, against 67.6% for the afternoon window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 177 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on LAX to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202558 flights79.3%
- Oct–Dec 2025153 flights75.8%
- Jan–Mar 2026143 flights62.0%
- Apr–Jun 202629 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 70.8% on time across 383 flights.
Spirit on LAX to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 79.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 62.0%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 128 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 83.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 54.7%, a spread of 29 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on LAX to DFW runs when it is late
The 107 late arrivals split 44 under half an hour, 36 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early69 flights18.9%
- Within 15 min190 flights51.9%
- 15–29 min late44 flights12.0%
- 30–59 min late36 flights9.8%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights4.1%
- 2+ hours late12 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 366 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 103 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 24 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on LAX to DFW
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 September 2025, 10 hours 14 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 September 2025 | 10 hours 14 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 September 2025 | 3 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 March 2026 | 3 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 February 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 December 2025 | 2 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 6,309 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,309 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 6,309 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 2,411 minutes out of 6,309, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.18%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,235 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.5% on time across 381 flights, 11 points above 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 383 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 DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.18% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 366 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to DFW, every carrier
- Spirit on DFW to LAX, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to DFW85.4%
- American Airlines on LAX to DFW73.7%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to DFW72.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.