Carrier route record

NKMSY→FLL

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 604
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 43%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on MSY to FLL lands a B−, about a point 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 604 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 368 at 74.0% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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

78.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 584 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.31%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.2%

Every carrier on MSY to FLL, 1,397 flights

These figures cover 604 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on MSY to FLL

Spirit flew 604 of the 1,397 flights on MSY to FLL, about 43% of it. Its 78.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.8% to JetBlue at 71.3%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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)	604	78.8%	64 min	3.31%	B−
Southwest Airlines	368	74.0%	46 min	0.27%	C+
JetBlue Airways	425	71.3%	82 min	1.88%	C

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 74.0%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am235 flights87.0%
8am–11am68 flights85.3%
11am–2pm14 flights—
2pm–5pm64 flights76.6%
5pm–8pm112 flights58.1%
8pm–5am111 flights78.2%

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 235 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to FLL through the year

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

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 54.0%. August is the strongest month at 87.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 34 points. October was the busiest month here, with 79 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.0%. 13 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 7,883 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
30%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

34% 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 7,883 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 7,883 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 3.31%, 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

7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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 73.6% on time across 604 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 604 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 3.31% 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. 584 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