Carrier route record
NKMIA→DFW
Spirit Airlines · Miami to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 282
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- 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 DFW draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 282 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MIA to DFW runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 156 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 271 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on MIA to DFW, 4,825 flights
These figures cover 282 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.2% 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 DFW
Spirit flew 282 of the 4,825 flights on MIA to DFW, about 6% of it. Its 62.0% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 75.3% to Spirit at 62.0%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 249 | 75.3% | 67 min | 2.41% | B |
| American Airlines | 4,294 | 73.7% | 79 min | 2.79% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 282 | 62.0% | 73 min | 3.19% | D− |
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 16 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–8am17 flights—
- 8am–11am31 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm56 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am141 flights57.5%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 71.4% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 141 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MIA to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202596 flights65.6%
- Oct–Dec 202574 flights66.2%
- Jan–Mar 202672 flights55.2%
- Apr–Jun 202640 flights57.5%
Scale runs 45% to 70%. 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 62.0% on time across 282 flights.
Spirit on MIA to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 55.2%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 71 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 73.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 51.2%. 22 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 7,546 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
39% 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 2,958 minutes out of 7,546, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,546 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.19%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 16.2% 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 1,121 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 80.4% on time across 282 flights, 18 points above 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 18 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 282 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 DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 271 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to DFW, every carrier
- Spirit on DFW to MIA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MIA to DFW75.3%
- American Airlines on MIA to DFW73.7%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.