Carrier route record

NKLGA→CLT

Spirit Airlines · New York to Charlotte

Flights: 262
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 LGA to CLT sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 262 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 924 at 77.7% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on LGA to CLT runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 243 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.25%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on LGA to CLT, 4,197 flights

These figures cover 262 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 LGA to CLT

Spirit flew 262 of the 4,197 flights on LGA to CLT, about 6% of it. Its 68.7% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.7% to Frontier at 58.5%. 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 LGA to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	924	77.7%	68 min	5.09%	B−
American Airlines	2,769	77.4%	104 min	3.79%	B−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	262	68.7%	68 min	7.25%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	242	58.5%	71 min	7.44%	D−

Republic Airways cancels 5.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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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 262 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am4 flights—
11am–2pm52 flights66.7%
2pm–5pm15 flights—
5pm–8pm85 flights72.0%
8pm–5am106 flights65.7%

Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 72.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 6 points.

Across the year

Spirit on LGA to CLT through the year

Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025109 flights63.7%
Jan–Mar 202691 flights71.2%
Apr–Jun 202632 flights65.6%

Scale runs 55% to 75%. 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 68.7% on time across 262 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on LGA to CLT held fairly steady: 63.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 71.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 65.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 36 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on LGA to CLT runs when it is late

Spirit on LGA to CLT often beats the schedule: 83 of 243 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 76 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.

15+ min early83 flights34.2%
Within 15 min84 flights34.6%
15–29 min late11 flights4.5%
30–59 min late28 flights11.5%
1–2 hours late26 flights10.7%
2+ hours late11 flights4.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 243 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

17 of 87 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 6 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on LGA to CLT

The latest arrival of the period was on 17 November 2025, 3 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on LGA to CLT in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
17 November 2025	3 hours 41 minutes	National Airspace System
20 December 2025	3 hours 8 minutes	Carrier
16 March 2026	2 hours 45 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
31 October 2025	2 hours 40 minutes	National Airspace System
2 December 2025	2 hours 38 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 5,187 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
14%

54% 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 2,809 minutes out of 5,187, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,187 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 7.25%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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

15.2% 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 544 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 77.0% on time across 261 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 262 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 LGA to CLT

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 243 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