Carrier route record
NKMIA→LGA
Spirit Airlines · Miami to New York
- Flights
- 422
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MIA to LGA draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two 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 422 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,916 at 72.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MIA to LGA runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 186 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 385 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.0%
Every carrier on MIA to LGA, 6,010 flights
These figures cover 422 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.2% 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 LGA
Spirit flew 422 of the 6,010 flights on MIA to LGA, about 7% of it. Its 59.0% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.0% to Spirit at 59.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,916 | 72.2% | 65 min | 3.97% | C− |
| American Airlines | 3,549 | 67.0% | 82 min | 3.47% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 60.0% | 90 min | 11.76% | D− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 422 | 59.0% | 73 min | 7.82% | D− |
Delta Air Lines 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 22 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am80 flights76.1%
- 8am–11am35 flights70.6%
- 11am–2pm6 flights—
- 2pm–5pm193 flights54.0%
- 5pm–8pm22 flights—
- 8pm–5am86 flights56.6%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 76.1% of the time, against 54.0% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 193 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MIA to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202594 flights65.9%
- Oct–Dec 2025115 flights49.1%
- Jan–Mar 2026181 flights62.7%
- Apr–Jun 202632 flights—
Scale runs 40% 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 59.0% on time across 422 flights.
Spirit on MIA to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 65.9% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 49.1%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 141 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 67.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 38.0%. 30 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 56% of the 12,000 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.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 6,510 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,581 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 7.82%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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. 18.2% 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 1,096 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 66.1% on time across 418 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 422 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 LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.82% 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. 385 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to LGA, every carrier
- Spirit on LGA to MIA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MIA to LGA72.2%
- American Airlines on MIA to LGA67.0%
- Frontier Airlines on MIA to LGA60.0%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.