Carrier route record
NKLGA→CMH
Spirit Airlines · New York to Columbus
- Flights
- 187
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on LGA to CMH lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 187 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on LGA to CMH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 179 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.4%
Every carrier on LGA to CMH, 3,074 flights
These figures cover 187 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 CMH
Spirit flew 187 of the 3,074 flights on LGA to CMH, about 6% of it. Its 79.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 100.0% to Republic at 77.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 187 | 79.9% | 71 min | 4.28% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 2,883 | 77.2% | 76 min | 4.61% | B− |
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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am85 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am34 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm3 flights—
- 2pm–5pm65 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.4% of the time, against 72.1% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 85 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on LGA to CMH through the year
- Jul–Sep 202591 flights80.5%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights78.8%
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
Scale runs 70% 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 79.9% on time across 187 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on LGA to CMH logged 91 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 89 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 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 79.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 58% of the 2,553 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.
- 58%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
58% 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 1,484 minutes out of 2,553, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,553 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.28%, against 1.81% 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
8.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 479 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.3% on time across 189 flights, 11 points below 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 187 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 CMH
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.28% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to CMH, every carrier
- Spirit on CMH to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to CMH77.2%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.