Carrier route record

NKRDU→FLL

Spirit Airlines · Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 201
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on RDU to FLL draws a C−. About 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 201 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on RDU to FLL runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 106 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 188 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.97%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.0%

Every carrier on RDU to FLL, 1,318 flights

These figures cover 201 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 RDU to FLL

Spirit flew 201 of the 1,318 flights on RDU to FLL, about 15% of it. Its 67.0% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 82.6% to Spirit at 67.0%. 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
JetBlue Airways	567	82.6%	77 min	1.76%	B
Delta Air Linesthin sample	364	78.8%	65 min	1.10%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	141	74.6%	63 min	2.13%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	45	71.1%	73 min	0.00%	C+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	201	67.0%	75 min	5.97%	C−

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 41 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am58 flights89.5%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm53 flights63.0%
5pm–8pm61 flights48.2%
8pm–5am26 flights—

Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.2% on time, against 89.5% 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 61 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on RDU to FLL through the year

Jul–Sep 202560 flights83.1%
Oct–Dec 202557 flights75.5%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights45.5%
Apr–Jun 202622 flights—

Scale runs 35% to 90%. 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 67.0% on time across 201 flights.

Spirit on RDU to FLL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 45.5%, a swing of 38 points on roughly 67 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.1%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 4,657 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
62%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
5%
Security
0%

62% 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 4,657 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 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 4,657 reported delay minutes.

32% 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 1,494 minutes out of 4,657, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 5.97%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.8% 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 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. 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 66.1% on time across 201 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. 201 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 5.97% 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. 188 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures