Carrier route record
NKPHL→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 571
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 571 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,628 at 75.4% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.4% on time across 1,628 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 535 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on PHL to FLL, 3,588 flights
These figures cover 571 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on PHL to FLL
Spirit flew 571 of the 3,588 flights on PHL to FLL, about 16% of it. Its 69.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.4% to Spirit at 69.9%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 | 1,628 | 75.4% | 78 min | 2.70% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 659 | 72.4% | 82 min | 2.28% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 730 | 70.9% | 80 min | 3.29% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 571 | 69.9% | 69 min | 5.95% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.3% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 26 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am238 flights79.6%
- 8am–11am99 flights62.9%
- 11am–2pm23 flights—
- 2pm–5pm22 flights—
- 5pm–8pm112 flights53.4%
- 8pm–5am77 flights60.8%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.4% on time, against 79.6% 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 238 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 83.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.2%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on PHL to FLL runs when it is late
Spirit on PHL to FLL often beats the schedule: 144 of 535 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 161 late arrivals split 39 under half an hour, 55 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 67 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early144 flights26.9%
- Within 15 min230 flights43.0%
- 15–29 min late39 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late55 flights10.3%
- 1–2 hours late45 flights8.4%
- 2+ hours late22 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 535 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
21 of 129 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 53 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FLL.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on PHL to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 February 2026, 8 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 February 2026 | 8 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 January 2026 | 5 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 December 2025 | 4 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 December 2025 | 4 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 October 2025 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%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 4,542 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,107 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 79.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.95%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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
12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg runs 71.3% on time across 572 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. 571 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 5.95% 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. 535 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 FLL75.4%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to FLL72.4%
- JetBlue Airways on PHL to FLL70.9%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.