Carrier route record
NKPHL→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Philadelphia to Detroit
- Flights
- 133
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on PHL to DTW earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 133 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,557 at 82.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's PHL to DTW record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 132 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on PHL to DTW, 2,952 flights
These figures cover 133 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 PHL to DTW
Spirit flew 133 of the 2,952 flights on PHL to DTW, about 5% of it. Its 87.9% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.9% to SkyWest at 67.2%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 82.3% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 76.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 845 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 133 | 87.9% | 102 min | 0.75% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,557 | 82.3% | 105 min | 2.12% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 179 | 79.7% | 72 min | 0.56% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 845 | 76.3% | 73 min | 5.80% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 112 | 74.3% | 110 min | 2.68% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 57 | 67.9% | 56 min | 1.75% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 67.2% | 223 min | 2.90% | C |
PSA Airlines cancels 5.8% 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 133 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's PHL to DTW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 87.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Spirit on PHL to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202582 flights91.4%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights85.7%
- Apr–Jun 20262 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 87.9% on time across 133 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on PHL to DTW logged 82 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 49 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 2 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 87.9% annual figure is the one to use.
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 1,624 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
35% 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 1,624 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 1,624 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 634 of the 1,624 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 453 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 132 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 133 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 PHL to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 133 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 87.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 132 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to PHL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on PHL to DTW82.3%
- American Airlines on PHL to DTW79.7%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to DTW76.3%
- Republic Airways on PHL to DTW74.3%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.