Carrier route record
NKLGA→DTW
Spirit Airlines · New York to Detroit
- Flights
- 827
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- 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 DTW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 8.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 827 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,982 at 81.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on LGA to DTW runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 760 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.3%
Every carrier on LGA to DTW, 3,861 flights
These figures cover 827 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 DTW
Spirit flew 827 of the 3,861 flights on LGA to DTW, about 21% of it. Its 72.1% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.0% to Spirit at 72.1%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.0% of the time; Republic Airways manages 74.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,052 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,982 | 81.0% | 87 min | 4.09% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,052 | 74.1% | 74 min | 5.13% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 827 | 72.1% | 88 min | 8.10% | C− |
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.
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 40 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am196 flights91.5%
- 8am–11am135 flights78.3%
- 11am–2pm81 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm168 flights61.2%
- 5pm–8pm183 flights60.2%
- 8pm–5am64 flights51.8%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.8% on time, against 91.5% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 196 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on LGA to DTW through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 48.1%. January is the strongest month at 87.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 39 points. January was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.6%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on LGA to DTW runs when it is late
Spirit on LGA to DTW often beats the schedule: 221 of 760 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Spirit on LGA to DTW is late it tends to be very late: 114 of its 212 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 56 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early221 flights29.1%
- Within 15 min327 flights43.0%
- 15–29 min late52 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late46 flights6.1%
- 1–2 hours late58 flights7.6%
- 2+ hours late56 flights7.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 760 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 208 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 23 made it up before arrival. 27 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on LGA to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 October 2025, 9 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 October 2025 | 9 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 March 2026 | 6 hours 42 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 30 November 2025 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 5 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 February 2026 | 4 hours 58 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 18,692 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 7,163 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 8.10%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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
15.0% 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 502 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 67.9% on time across 829 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. 827 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 DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.10% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 760 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to DTW81.0%
- Republic Airways on LGA to DTW74.1%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.