Carrier route record
NKPHL→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 709
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on PHL to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 709 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,449 at 75.9% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.9% on time across 1,449 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 669 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.0%
Every carrier on PHL to FLL, 3,411 flights
These figures cover 709 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 PHL to FLL
Spirit flew 709 of the 3,411 flights on PHL to FLL, about 21% of it. Its 69.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.9% to Spirit at 69.5%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,449 | 75.9% | 74 min | 2.62% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 579 | 73.1% | 81 min | 1.73% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 674 | 70.1% | 75 min | 2.08% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 709 | 69.5% | 69 min | 5.22% | C− |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 75.9%, 6 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 30 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am300 flights81.8%
- 8am–11am99 flights62.9%
- 11am–2pm23 flights—
- 2pm–5pm36 flights74.3%
- 5pm–8pm163 flights51.6%
- 8pm–5am88 flights58.8%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.6% on time, against 81.8% 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 300 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on PHL to FLL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 62.9%. 16 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
41% 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 5,791 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,124 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 81.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.22%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 12.4% 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 993 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 70.6% on time across 709 flights, within about 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. 709 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 FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.22% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 669 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to PHL, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHL to FLL75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to FLL73.1%
- JetBlue Airways on PHL to FLL70.1%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.