Carrier route record

NKLGA→CLT

Spirit Airlines · New York to Charlotte

Flights: 332
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 332 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 965 at 81.2% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on LGA to CLT runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 70 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 313 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.72%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.2%

Every carrier on LGA to CLT, 4,336 flights

These figures cover 332 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 LGA to CLT

Spirit flew 332 of the 4,336 flights on LGA to CLT, about 8% of it. Its 70.6% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.2% to Frontier at 60.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 LGA to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	965	81.2%	69 min	3.94%	B−
American Airlines	2,804	78.0%	107 min	3.82%	B−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	332	70.6%	74 min	5.72%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	235	60.1%	75 min	2.98%	D

Republic Airways cancels 3.9% 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.

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 21 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am47 flights84.8%
11am–2pm57 flights69.8%
2pm–5pm18 flights—
5pm–8pm85 flights72.0%
8pm–5am125 flights63.6%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 84.8% for the 8am–11am 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 125 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LGA to CLT through the year

Jul–Sep 2025100 flights78.8%
Oct–Dec 2025109 flights63.7%
Jan–Mar 202691 flights71.2%
Apr–Jun 202632 flights65.6%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 70.6% on time across 332 flights.

Spirit on LGA to CLT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 63.7%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 83 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 54.8%. 27 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 6,792 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.

National Airspace System
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
11%

41% 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 6,792 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 6,792 reported delay minutes.

48% 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 3,279 minutes out of 6,792, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 5.72%, against 1.81% 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

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.

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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.2% on time across 331 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 332 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 5.72% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 313 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