Carrier route record

NKLGA→DFW

Spirit Airlines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 241
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
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 DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 241 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,955 at 71.0% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on LGA to DFW runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 224 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.05%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.8%

Every carrier on LGA to DFW, 6,782 flights

These figures cover 241 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 DFW

Spirit flew 241 of the 6,782 flights on LGA to DFW, about 4% of it. Its 69.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 71.0% to Frontier at 66.2%. 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 DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,955	71.0%	74 min	4.35%	C−
American Airlines	4,295	71.0%	90 min	4.98%	C−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	241	69.6%	74 min	7.05%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	291	66.2%	114 min	6.53%	C−

American Airlines cancels 5.0% 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 16 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–8am16 flights—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm51 flights82.0%
2pm–5pm4 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am170 flights66.2%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 82.0% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 66.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 170 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LGA to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 202550 flights81.6%
Oct–Dec 202573 flights64.7%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights69.2%
Apr–Jun 202629 flights—

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 69.6% on time across 241 flights.

Spirit on LGA to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 81.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 64.7%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 80 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 74.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.8%. 5 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 62% of the 5,058 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
62%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Carrier
13%
Security
0%

62% 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 3,140 minutes out of 5,058, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,058 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 7.05%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 15.2% 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 1,389 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 65.8% on time across 242 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 241 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 DFW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.05% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 224 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