Carrier route record

NKRDU→FLL

Spirit Airlines · Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 158
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on RDU to FLL draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 158 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on RDU to FLL runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 145 extra late arrivals.

On time

62.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 145 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.59%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

77.2%

Every carrier on RDU to FLL, 1,402 flights

These figures cover 158 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 RDU to FLL

Spirit flew 158 of the 1,402 flights on RDU to FLL, about 11% of it. Its 62.8% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.8% to Spirit at 62.8%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on RDU to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	364	80.8%	67 min	0.55%	B+
JetBlue Airways	668	79.5%	78 min	2.10%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	142	76.3%	62 min	2.11%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	70	68.1%	76 min	1.43%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	158	62.8%	75 min	7.59%	D−

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 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am34 flights87.9%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm53 flights63.0%
5pm–8pm58 flights45.3%
8pm–5am10 flights—

Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 45.3% on time, against 87.9% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 58 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on RDU to FLL through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202557 flights75.5%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights45.5%
Apr–Jun 202622 flights—

Scale runs 35% to 80%. 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 62.8% on time across 158 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on RDU to FLL logged 17 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 57 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 62 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 22 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 62.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 73.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 58.1%, a spread of 15 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on RDU to FLL runs when it is late

The 54 late arrivals split 14 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.

15+ min early30 flights20.7%
Within 15 min61 flights42.1%
15–29 min late14 flights9.7%
30–59 min late18 flights12.4%
1–2 hours late12 flights8.3%
2+ hours late10 flights6.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 145 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

16 of 62 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. In the other direction, 8 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 RDU to FLL

The latest arrival of the period was on 18 March 2026, 5 hours 37 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Four of the five worst days fell in March 2026.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on RDU to FLL in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
18 March 2026	5 hours 37 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 March 2026	3 hours 41 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
26 December 2025	3 hours 27 minutes	National Airspace System
9 March 2026	3 hours 21 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
15 March 2026	3 hours 16 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 4,046 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
58%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
5%
Security
1%

58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,046 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 4,046 reported delay minutes.

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 1,467 minutes out of 4,046, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 7.59%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twelve 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

15.2% 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 680 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 60.4% on time across 158 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. 158 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 RDU to FLL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.59% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 145 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures