Carrier route record
NKLGA→FLL
Spirit Airlines · New York to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 981
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- 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 FLL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 981 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,597 at 71.4% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.4% on time across 1,597 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 916 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.8%
Every carrier on LGA to FLL, 4,655 flights
These figures cover 981 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% 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 FLL
Spirit flew 981 of the 4,655 flights on LGA to FLL, about 21% of it. Its 69.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 71.4% to JetBlue at 65.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 71.4% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,596 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,597 | 71.4% | 67 min | 3.76% | C− |
| American Airlines | 481 | 70.3% | 78 min | 3.95% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 981 | 69.7% | 81 min | 6.63% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,596 | 65.3% | 85 min | 3.63% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 4.0% 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 39 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am324 flights87.7%
- 8am–11am147 flights68.1%
- 11am–2pm211 flights64.8%
- 2pm–5pm35 flights48.5%
- 5pm–8pm223 flights54.2%
- 8pm–5am41 flights60.0%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.7% of the time, against 48.5% for the afternoon window. That is 39 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 324 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on LGA to FLL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 74.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.6%. 17 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 54% of the 23,000 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.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% 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 12,000 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 22,524 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.63%, 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. 14.1% 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 1,076 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 65.9% on time across 976 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. 981 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 FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.63% 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. 916 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to FLL71.4%
- American Airlines on LGA to FLL70.3%
- JetBlue Airways on LGA to FLL65.3%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.