Carrier route record
NKPHX→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Phoenix to Detroit
- Flights
- 125
- 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 PHX to DTW lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 125 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,331 at 84.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on PHX to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 123 completed flights
Avg delay
114 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.7%
Every carrier on PHX to DTW, 2,426 flights
These figures cover 125 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 PHX to DTW
Spirit flew 125 of the 2,426 flights on PHX to DTW, about 5% of it. Its 80.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.3% to Southwest at 56.7%. Two 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 84.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 76.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 628 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,331 | 84.3% | 82 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 125 | 80.5% | 114 min | 1.60% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 312 | 76.5% | 85 min | 1.28% | B |
| American Airlines | 628 | 76.2% | 76 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 56.7% | 38 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Delta leads American by 8 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 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 125 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm62 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm9 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am54 flights79.6%
Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 81.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
Spirit on PHX to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202570 flights81.4%
- Oct–Dec 202548 flights78.7%
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 85%. 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 80.5% on time across 125 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on PHX to DTW logged 70 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 48 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.5% 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 2,738 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
36% 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 2,738 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 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 2,738 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.60% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.9% 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 1,671 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.8% on time across 124 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 125 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 PHX to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 125 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 80.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 123 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to PHX, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on PHX to DTW84.3%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to DTW76.5%
- American Airlines on PHX to DTW76.2%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.