Carrier route record
NKLAX→IAH
Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to Houston
- Flights
- 331
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on LAX to IAH sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 331 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,420 at 87.4% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.4% on time across 3,420 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 326 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.6%
Every carrier on LAX to IAH, 5,143 flights
These figures cover 331 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on LAX to IAH
Spirit flew 331 of the 5,143 flights on LAX to IAH, about 6% of it. Its 73.0% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.4% to Frontier at 70.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 87.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 81.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 408 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 3,420 | 87.4% | 52 min | 0.18% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 648 | 84.8% | 70 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 408 | 81.2% | 70 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 331 | 73.0% | 73 min | 1.51% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 336 | 70.6% | 74 min | 1.49% | C |
United leads SkyWest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am10 flights—
- 11am–2pm10 flights—
- 2pm–5pm33 flights64.5%
- 5pm–8pm175 flights71.1%
- 8pm–5am87 flights77.0%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 77.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 13 points.
Across the year
Spirit on LAX to IAH through the year
- Jul–Sep 202560 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 2025153 flights66.4%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights71.3%
- Apr–Jun 202629 flights—
Scale runs 60% 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 73.0% on time across 331 flights.
Spirit on LAX to IAH did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.4%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 110 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.3%, a spread of 30 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on LAX to IAH runs when it is late
The 88 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early49 flights15.0%
- Within 15 min189 flights58.0%
- 15–29 min late23 flights7.1%
- 30–59 min late30 flights9.2%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights6.7%
- 2+ hours late13 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 326 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
22 of 96 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on LAX to IAH
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 November 2025, 9 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in November 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 November 2025 | 9 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 September 2025 | 4 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 November 2025 | 3 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 December 2025 | 3 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 November 2025 | 3 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 6,381 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,381 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 to one. The split is drawn from 6,381 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,379 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 78.9% on time across 333 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 331 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 IAH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 331 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 73.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 326 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to IAH, every carrier
- Spirit on IAH to LAX, the return leg
- United Airlines on LAX to IAH87.4%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to IAH84.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to IAH81.2%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to IAH70.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.