Carrier route record

NKLAX→FLL

Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 164
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
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 FLL earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 164 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on LAX to FLL runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 212 extra late arrivals.

On time

56.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 156 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.88%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.0%

Every carrier on LAX to FLL, 2,275 flights

These figures cover 164 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 FLL

Spirit flew 164 of the 2,275 flights on LAX to FLL, about 7% of it. Its 56.4% on time is 18 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 75.8% to Spirit at 56.4%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways	1,748	75.8%	60 min	0.97%	B+
Delta Air Linesthin sample	363	73.3%	54 min	0.83%	C+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	164	56.4%	65 min	4.88%	D−

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 29 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–8am—
8am–11am25 flights—
11am–2pm38 flights73.7%
2pm–5pm3 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am98 flights44.4%

Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.4% on time, against 73.7% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 98 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LAX to FLL through the year

Jul–Sep 202528 flights—
Oct–Dec 202552 flights53.8%
Jan–Mar 202670 flights48.4%
Apr–Jun 202614 flights—

Scale runs 40% to 60%. 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 56.4% on time across 164 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on LAX to FLL logged 28 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 52 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 70 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 14 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 56.4% annual figure is the one to use.

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 4,411 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
29%
Security
1%

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 1,678 minutes out of 4,411, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,411 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 4.88%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.7% 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 2,343 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 61.2% on time across 163 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 164 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 FLL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.88% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 156 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