Carrier route record
NKLGA→ORD
Spirit Airlines · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 284
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 2%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on LGA to ORD draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 284 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,989 at 69.2% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 69.2% on time across 2,989 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 264 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.04%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.7%
Every carrier on LGA to ORD, 11,630 flights
These figures cover 284 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.8% 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 ORD
Spirit flew 284 of the 11,630 flights on LGA to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 64.0% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 69.2% to SkyWest at 61.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The four carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,989 | 69.2% | 89 min | 4.78% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 1,285 | 68.3% | 62 min | 9.42% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,309 | 65.8% | 97 min | 5.89% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,671 | 65.4% | 90 min | 4.24% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 284 | 64.0% | 88 min | 7.04% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.8% | 90 min | 17.39% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 9.4% 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.
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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 43 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am92 flights69.0%
- 8am–11am26 flights—
- 11am–2pm40 flights53.8%
- 2pm–5pm52 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights39.4%
- 8pm–5am39 flights61.1%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 39.4% on time, against 82.4% for the 2pm–5pm 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 92 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on LGA to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202531 flights90.3%
- Oct–Dec 2025134 flights60.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights61.2%
- Apr–Jun 202629 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. 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 64.0% on time across 284 flights.
Spirit on LGA to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 60.5%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 95 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.4%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on LGA to ORD runs when it is late
The 95 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 47 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early46 flights17.4%
- Within 15 min123 flights46.6%
- 15–29 min late18 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late30 flights11.4%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights8.3%
- 2+ hours late25 flights9.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 264 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 74 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 28 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on LGA to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 April 2026, 6 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 April 2026 | 6 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 16 January 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 December 2025 | 4 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 4 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 November 2025 | 3 hours 57 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 59% of the 8,367 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% 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 4,964 minutes out of 8,367, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,367 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 7.04%, against 1.89% 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
17.8% 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 733 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 48.8% on time across 284 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 284 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 ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 264 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ORD, every carrier
- Spirit on ORD to LGA, the return leg
- American Airlines on LGA to ORD69.2%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ORD68.3%
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to ORD65.8%
- United Airlines on LGA to ORD65.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.