Carrier route record

NKMSY→FLL

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 492
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 35%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on MSY to FLL lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 492 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 365 at 73.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MSY to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 472 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.07%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

73.1%

Every carrier on MSY to FLL, 1,406 flights

These figures cover 492 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on MSY to FLL

Spirit flew 492 of the 1,406 flights on MSY to FLL, about 35% of it. Its 77.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 77.5% to JetBlue at 68.9%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)	492	77.5%	62 min	4.07%	B−
Southwest Airlines	365	73.5%	44 min	0.27%	C+
JetBlue Airways	549	68.9%	82 min	2.19%	C

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 73.5%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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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 29 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am196 flights87.0%
8am–11am52 flights84.6%
11am–2pm6 flights—
2pm–5pm64 flights76.6%
5pm–8pm112 flights58.1%
8pm–5am62 flights75.4%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.1% on time, against 87.0% for the 5am–8am 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 196 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to FLL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 54.0%. January is the strongest month at 86.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. October was the busiest month here, with 79 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.5%, a spread of 20 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on MSY to FLL runs when it is late

The 106 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 36 an hour or more.

15+ min early89 flights18.9%
Within 15 min277 flights58.7%
15–29 min late38 flights8.1%
30–59 min late32 flights6.8%
1–2 hours late23 flights4.9%
2+ hours late13 flights2.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 472 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

14 of 101 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 19 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on MSY to FLL

The latest arrival of the period was on 17 February 2026, 5 hours 22 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Four of the five worst days fell in February 2026.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on MSY to FLL in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
17 February 2026	5 hours 22 minutes	Carrier
25 February 2026	4 hours 50 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 February 2026	4 hours 25 minutes	National Airspace System
6 January 2026	4 hours 10 minutes	Carrier
14 February 2026	3 hours 25 minutes	Extreme weather

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 6,556 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
Carrier
30%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
1%

33% 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 2,195 minutes out of 6,556, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,556 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.0% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.07%, 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

7.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 673 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 69.9% on time across 488 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. 492 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 MSY to FLL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.07% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 472 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures