Carrier route record
NKRSW→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Fort Myers to Detroit
- Flights
- 335
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on RSW to DTW draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 335 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on RSW to DTW runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 316 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on RSW to DTW, 1,773 flights
These figures cover 335 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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 RSW to DTW
Spirit flew 335 of the 1,773 flights on RSW to DTW, about 19% of it. Its 67.1% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.0% to Frontier at 48.8%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,358 | 78.0% | 80 min | 1.25% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 335 | 67.1% | 67 min | 5.67% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 48.8% | 121 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 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 335 flights.
- 5am–8am7 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm42 flights59.5%
- 2pm–5pm113 flights65.4%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am136 flights68.7%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 59.5% on time against 68.7% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 136 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on RSW to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202519 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202587 flights76.5%
- Jan–Mar 2026187 flights63.7%
- Apr–Jun 202642 flights53.7%
Scale runs 45% 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 67.1% on time across 335 flights.
Spirit on RSW to DTW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.5% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 53.7%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 112 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 74.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.4%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on RSW to DTW runs when it is late
Spirit on RSW to DTW often beats the schedule: 88 of 316 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 104 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 35 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early88 flights27.8%
- Within 15 min124 flights39.2%
- 15–29 min late24 flights7.6%
- 30–59 min late35 flights11.1%
- 1–2 hours late29 flights9.2%
- 2+ hours late16 flights5.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 316 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 98 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 9 made it up before arrival. 15 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on RSW to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 November 2025, 5 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 November 2025 | 5 hours 4 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 March 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 September 2025 | 4 hours | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 2 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 6,947 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,947 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 to one. The split is drawn from 6,947 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 2,730 minutes out of 6,947, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.67%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
14.2% 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 1,084 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.7% on time across 337 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. 335 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 RSW to DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.67% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 316 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RSW to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to RSW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on RSW to DTW78.0%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.