Carrier route record

NKLAX→SAT

Spirit Airlines · Los Angeles to San Antonio

Flights: 163
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on LAX to SAT earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 163 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 697 at 86.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's LAX to SAT record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 158 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.45%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.1%

Every carrier on LAX to SAT, 1,881 flights

These figures cover 163 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on LAX to SAT

Spirit flew 163 of the 1,881 flights on LAX to SAT, about 9% of it. Its 85.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.0% to Southwest at 68.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points 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	86.0%	67 min	0.29%	A+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	163	85.4%	85 min	2.45%	A
Delta Air Lines	684	84.1%	77 min	0.44%	B+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	337	68.5%	43 min	0.00%	C+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 86.0%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 163 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am79 flights90.9%
11am–2pm17 flights—
2pm–5pm50 flights89.6%
5pm–8pm17 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 90.9% on time. The full set of windows spans about a point.

Across the year

Spirit on LAX to SAT through the year

Jul–Sep 202584 flights92.8%
Oct–Dec 202573 flights75.4%
Jan–Mar 20266 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. 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 85.4% on time across 163 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on LAX to SAT logged 84 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 85.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 1,965 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
15%

45% 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 1,965 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 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 1,965 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 784 of the 1,965 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.61%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg runs 86.8% on time across 163 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. 163 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: treat all of this as provisional. 163 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 85.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 158 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