Carrier route record

NKORD→TPA

Spirit Airlines · Chicago to Tampa

Flights: 283
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 7

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

Spirit on ORD to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 283 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,403 at 78.4% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on ORD to TPA runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 63 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 275 completed flights

Avg delay

97 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.83%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.0%

Every carrier on ORD to TPA, 3,217 flights

These figures cover 283 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 ORD to TPA

Spirit flew 283 of the 3,217 flights on ORD to TPA, about 9% of it. Its 71.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 100.0% to Envoy at 50.0%. Four 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 78.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,141 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
United Airlines	1,403	78.4%	71 min	0.50%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	283	71.3%	97 min	2.83%	C
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	214	71.2%	91 min	0.93%	C+
American Airlines	1,141	68.0%	70 min	1.93%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	173	66.7%	153 min	4.62%	C−
Envoy Airthin sample	2	50.0%	16 min	0.00%	F+

United leads American by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 12 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am8 flights—
8am–11am93 flights75.8%
11am–2pm81 flights66.2%
2pm–5pm13 flights—
5pm–8pm74 flights78.4%
8pm–5am14 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 66.2% on time against 78.4% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 93 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on ORD to TPA through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights87.0%
Oct–Dec 202572 flights66.2%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights64.3%
Apr–Jun 202630 flights—

Scale runs 55% 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 71.3% on time across 283 flights.

Spirit on ORD to TPA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 87.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 64.3%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 94 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 62.5%. 23 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 7,689 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
31%
Carrier
26%
Extreme weather
7%
Security
0%

36% 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 2,734 minutes out of 7,689, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,689 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 2.83%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 13.8% 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 1,012 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 runs 69.1% on time across 281 flights, within 2 points 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. 283 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 TPA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.83% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 275 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