Carrier route record
NKLAX→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to Detroit
- Flights
- 547
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on LAX to DTW lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 547 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on LAX to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 536 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on LAX to DTW, 2,528 flights
These figures cover 547 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on LAX to DTW
Spirit flew 547 of the 2,528 flights on LAX to DTW, about 22% of it. Its 79.3% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Spirit at 79.3%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,979 | 83.6% | 62 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 547 | 79.3% | 85 min | 2.01% | B |
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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am72 flights97.2%
- 8am–11am80 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm90 flights69.0%
- 2pm–5pm38 flights89.5%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am266 flights72.2%
Scale runs 60% 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 69.0% on time against 97.2% 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 266 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on LAX to DTW through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 92.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 79 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.2%. 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 9,412 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
34% 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 9,412 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 9,412 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 3,271 of the 9,412 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 1,979 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 80.3% on time across 546 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. 547 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 DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 547 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 79.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 536 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to LAX, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to DTW83.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.