Carrier route record
NKMIA→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Miami to Detroit
- Flights
- 245
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MIA to DTW draws a D−. About 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 245 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 930 at 76.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on MIA to DTW runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 135 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 235 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.08%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.5%
Every carrier on MIA to DTW, 1,755 flights
These figures cover 245 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 MIA to DTW
Spirit flew 245 of the 1,755 flights on MIA to DTW, about 14% of it. Its 63.8% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.4% to Republic at 57.1%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 76.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 394 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 108 | 82.4% | 52 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 930 | 76.9% | 92 min | 1.08% | B |
| American Airlines | 394 | 70.4% | 64 min | 1.02% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 64 | 67.7% | 88 min | 3.12% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 245 | 63.8% | 69 min | 4.08% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 57.1% | 126 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Delta leads American by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 25 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am9 flights—
- 8am–11am35 flights71.9%
- 11am–2pm31 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm25 flights—
- 5pm–8pm92 flights68.9%
- 8pm–5am53 flights49.0%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.0% on time, against 74.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 92 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MIA to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights63.3%
- Oct–Dec 202574 flights68.6%
- Jan–Mar 2026114 flights59.6%
- Apr–Jun 202627 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 63.8% on time across 245 flights.
Quarter by quarter Spirit on MIA to DTW held fairly steady: 63.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 68.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 59.6% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.4%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on MIA to DTW runs when it is late
The 85 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early39 flights16.6%
- Within 15 min111 flights47.2%
- 15–29 min late21 flights8.9%
- 30–59 min late29 flights12.3%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights8.9%
- 2+ hours late14 flights6.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 235 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 77 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 9 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 17 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 DTW.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on MIA to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 September 2025, 5 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across September, March, February and December, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 September 2025 | 5 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 March 2026 | 3 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 February 2026 | 3 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 September 2025 | 3 hours 30 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 December 2025 | 3 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 5,893 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,893 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 5,893 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 2,013 minutes out of 5,893, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.08%, against 1.89% 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
14.9% 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 1,145 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 77.7% on time across 248 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 245 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 DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.08% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 235 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to MIA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on MIA to DTW82.4%
- Delta Air Lines on MIA to DTW76.9%
- American Airlines on MIA to DTW70.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.