Carrier route record
NKRIC→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Richmond to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 208
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on RIC 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 208 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on RIC to FLL runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 144 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 194 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on RIC to FLL, 808 flights
These figures cover 208 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on RIC to FLL
Spirit flew 208 of the 808 flights on RIC to FLL, about 26% of it. Its 62.9% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 78.1% to Spirit at 62.9%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 600 | 78.1% | 79 min | 3.00% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 208 | 62.9% | 80 min | 6.25% | 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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am22 flights—
- 8am–11am91 flights66.2%
- 11am–2pm40 flights70.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm50 flights38.3%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 30% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 38.3% on time, against 70.0% for the 11am–2pm 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 91 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on RIC to FLL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202582 flights70.0%
- Jan–Mar 202678 flights63.8%
- Apr–Jun 202631 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. 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 62.9% on time across 208 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on RIC to FLL logged 17 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 82 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 78 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 31 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 62.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 67.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on RIC to FLL runs when it is late
The 72 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 17 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 29 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early27 flights13.9%
- Within 15 min95 flights49.0%
- 15–29 min late26 flights13.4%
- 30–59 min late17 flights8.8%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights7.7%
- 2+ hours late14 flights7.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 194 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
7 of 57 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 22 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 RIC to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 February 2026, 7 hours 43 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 February 2026 | 7 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 April 2026 | 7 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 April 2026 | 5 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 September 2025 | 4 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 February 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 5,723 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
33% 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 1,897 minutes out of 5,723, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,723 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.25%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
14.9% 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 806 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 63.1% on time across 208 flights, within half 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. 208 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 RIC to FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 194 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.