Carrier route record

NKRSW→ORD

Spirit Airlines · Fort Myers to Chicago

Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on RSW to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,612 at 80.7% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on RSW to ORD runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 75 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.21%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.5%

Every carrier on RSW to ORD, 3,232 flights

These figures cover 365 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 RSW to ORD

Spirit flew 365 of the 3,232 flights on RSW to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 70.1% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.7% to Southwest at 56.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 80.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 74.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,116 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on RSW to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,612	80.7%	73 min	0.68%	B+
American Airlines	1,116	74.3%	91 min	1.97%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	36	71.4%	97 min	2.78%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)	365	70.1%	77 min	5.21%	C−
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	103	56.0%	78 min	1.94%	D

United leads American by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 33 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am153 flights83.0%
8am–11am29 flights—
11am–2pm34 flights70.6%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm35 flights63.6%
8pm–5am114 flights50.5%

Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.5% on time, against 83.0% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 153 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on RSW to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202577 flights85.5%
Oct–Dec 202576 flights72.6%
Jan–Mar 2026178 flights63.2%
Apr–Jun 202634 flights63.6%

Scale runs 55% 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 70.1% on time across 365 flights.

Spirit on RSW to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 85.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 63.2%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 91 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.8%. 13 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. National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 7,938 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.

National Airspace System
51%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
1%

51% 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 4,019 minutes out of 7,938, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,938 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 5.21%, 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. 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 1,120 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 60.8% on time across 372 flights, 9 points below 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.21% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 345 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