Carrier route record

NKLAX→SAT

Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to San Antonio

Flights: 101
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 SAT lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 101 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 697 at 85.9% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Spirit on LAX to SAT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 97 completed flights

Avg delay

93 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.96%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

81.6%

Every carrier on LAX to SAT, 1,814 flights

These figures cover 101 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 SAT

Spirit flew 101 of the 1,814 flights on LAX to SAT, about 6% of it. Its 79.4% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.9% to Southwest at 65.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to SAT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	697	85.9%	68 min	0.29%	A+
Delta Air Lines	679	85.9%	74 min	0.29%	A+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	101	79.4%	93 min	3.96%	B−
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	337	65.0%	40 min	0.00%	C+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 85.9%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 101 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am41 flights89.7%
11am–2pm12 flights—
2pm–5pm31 flights83.3%
5pm–8pm17 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 89.7% on time for the 8am–11am window against 83.3% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 41 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LAX to SAT through the year

Jul–Sep 202522 flights—
Oct–Dec 202573 flights75.4%
Jan–Mar 20266 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 80%. 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 79.4% on time across 101 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on LAX to SAT logged 22 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 73 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 79.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 1,865 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
15%

43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,865 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 to one. The split is drawn from 1,865 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 784 of the 1,865 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 3.96%, 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

12.4% 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 1,211 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 82.5% on time across 101 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 101 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 SAT

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 97 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures