Carrier route record

NKORD→LAS

Spirit Airlines · Chicago to Las Vegas

Flights: 261
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on ORD to LAS lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 261 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,328 at 79.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's ORD to LAS record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 258 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.15%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.7%

Every carrier on ORD to LAS, 5,297 flights

These figures cover 261 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 ORD to LAS

Spirit flew 261 of the 5,297 flights on ORD to LAS, about 5% of it. Its 83.7% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.7% to Frontier at 58.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,852 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	261	83.7%	73 min	1.15%	B
United Airlines	2,328	79.6%	64 min	0.43%	B+
Southwest Airlines	670	72.1%	69 min	0.75%	C+
American Airlines	1,852	66.8%	71 min	2.21%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	186	58.3%	124 min	5.91%	D−

The spread between United and American is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 28 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am85 flights87.1%
8am–11am36 flights100.0%
11am–2pm20 flights—
2pm–5pm40 flights72.5%
5pm–8pm49 flights73.9%
8pm–5am31 flights74.2%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 100.0% of the time, against 72.5% for the afternoon window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 85 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on ORD to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 2025191 flights84.8%
Oct–Dec 202565 flights83.9%
Jan–Mar 20261 flights—
Apr–Jun 20264 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 83.7% on time across 261 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on ORD to LAS logged 191 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 65 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 1 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 4 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.8%. 26 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 3,080 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
29%
Extreme weather
19%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 19% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,080 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,071 of the 3,080 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,514 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg runs 83.6% on time across 266 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 261 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 ORD to LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 261 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 258 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