Carrier route record

NKMIA→CLT

Spirit Airlines · Miami to Charlotte

Flights: 264
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on MIA to CLT lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 264 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

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

On time

79.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 254 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.79%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.1%

Every carrier on MIA to CLT, 3,726 flights

These figures cover 264 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 MIA to CLT

Spirit flew 264 of the 3,726 flights on MIA to CLT, about 7% of it. Its 79.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 85.5% to American at 77.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on MIA to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	213	85.5%	94 min	2.82%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	264	79.1%	77 min	3.79%	B−
American Airlines	3,249	77.6%	73 min	1.45%	B

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 21 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–8am28 flights—
8am–11am153 flights83.7%
11am–2pm27 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm56 flights62.3%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.3% on time, against 83.7% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 153 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MIA to CLT through the year

Jul–Sep 202564 flights81.0%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights76.4%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights79.7%
Apr–Jun 202623 flights—

Scale runs 70% 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 79.1% on time across 264 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on MIA to CLT held fairly steady: 81.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 76.4% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 79.7% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.1%. 11 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 4,101 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
42%
Carrier
15%

43% 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 4,101 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 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 4,101 reported delay minutes.

42% 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 1,712 minutes out of 4,101, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.79%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 9.8% 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 650 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 71.6% on time across 265 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 264 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 MIA to CLT

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.79% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 254 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