Carrier route record
NKRSW→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Fort Myers to Detroit
- Flights
- 385
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on RSW to DTW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 385 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on RSW to DTW runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 366 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.0%
Every carrier on RSW to DTW, 1,820 flights
These figures cover 385 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 RSW to DTW
Spirit flew 385 of the 1,820 flights on RSW to DTW, about 21% of it. Its 68.3% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.5% 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 | 1,355 | 78.5% | 80 min | 1.40% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 385 | 68.3% | 66 min | 4.94% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 48.8% | 121 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 12 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–8am7 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm42 flights59.5%
- 2pm–5pm132 flights67.5%
- 5pm–8pm62 flights71.0%
- 8pm–5am142 flights68.6%
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 71.0% for 5pm–8pm. 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 142 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on RSW to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202569 flights78.3%
- Oct–Dec 202587 flights76.5%
- Jan–Mar 2026187 flights63.7%
- Apr–Jun 202642 flights53.7%
Scale runs 45% 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 68.3% on time across 385 flights.
Spirit on RSW to DTW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.3% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 53.7%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 96 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 75.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.4%. 14 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 47% of the 7,699 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% 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 7,699 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 7,699 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 3,119 minutes out of 7,699, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.94%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.7% 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 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.8% on time across 386 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 385 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 4.94% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 366 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 DTW78.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.