Carrier route record
NKLGA→CMH
Spirit Airlines · New York to Columbus
- Flights
- 125
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on LGA to CMH lands a B−, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 125 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's LGA to CMH record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 121 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.20%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on LGA to CMH, 3,034 flights
These figures cover 125 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on LGA to CMH
Spirit flew 125 of the 3,034 flights on LGA to CMH, about 4% of it. Its 83.5% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. 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 76.4%. 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 | 125 | 83.5% | 57 min | 3.20% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 2,905 | 76.4% | 83 min | 5.40% | B− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am85 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am34 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm3 flights—
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 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 75.0% for the morning window. That is 15 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 202529 flights—
- 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 83.5% on time across 125 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on LGA to CMH logged 29 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 83.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on LGA to CMH runs when it is late
The 20 late arrivals split 3 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more. Not one arrived two hours late.
- 15+ min early23 flights19.0%
- Within 15 min78 flights64.5%
- 15–29 min late3 flights2.5%
- 30–59 min late9 flights7.4%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights6.6%
- 2+ hours late0 flights0.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 121 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 19 of 121 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on LGA to CMH
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 December 2025, 1 hour 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 December 2025 | 1 hour 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 November 2025 | 1 hour 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 November 2025 | 1 hour 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 December 2025 | 1 hour 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 December 2025 | 1 hour 19 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 55% of the 1,134 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Carrier
- 38%National Airspace System
- 7%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 626 of the 1,134 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,134 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 431 minutes out of 1,134, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.20%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 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 70.2% on time across 127 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 125 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 3.20% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 121 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 CMH76.4%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.