Carrier route record

NKLGA→DTW

Spirit Airlines · New York to Detroit

Flights: 998
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
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 DTW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 7.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 998 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,980 at 81.1% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on LGA to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

75.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 924 completed flights

Avg delay

89 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.41%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.0%

Every carrier on LGA to DTW, 4,011 flights

These figures cover 998 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.3% 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 DTW

Spirit flew 998 of the 4,011 flights on LGA to DTW, about 25% of it. Its 75.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.1% to Republic at 74.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Republic Airways manages 74.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,033 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LGA to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,980	81.1%	85 min	3.54%	B−
Spirit Airlines (this page)	998	75.1%	89 min	7.41%	B−
Republic Airways	1,033	74.9%	71 min	5.23%	C−

Republic Airways cancels 5.2% 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 35 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am253 flights92.7%
8am–11am135 flights78.3%
11am–2pm143 flights87.3%
2pm–5pm169 flights61.5%
5pm–8pm191 flights62.0%
8pm–5am107 flights57.9%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.9% on time, against 92.7% 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 253 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on LGA to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 48.1%. August is the strongest month at 97.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 49 points. January was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.2%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 21,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
23%
Security
0%
Extreme weather
0%

38% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 20,512 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 7,862 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 7.41%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.3% 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 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. 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 69.6% on time across 999 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 998 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 7.41% 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. 924 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