Carrier route record

NKSJU→FLL

Spirit Airlines · San Juan to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 290
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 4

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

Spirit on SJU 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 290 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on SJU to FLL runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 157 extra late arrivals.

On time

61.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 281 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.76%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.1%

Every carrier on SJU to FLL, 2,342 flights

These figures cover 290 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% 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 SJU to FLL

Spirit flew 290 of the 2,342 flights on SJU to FLL, about 12% of it. Its 61.9% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.6% to Spirit at 61.9%. Two 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 SJU to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	128	81.6%	143 min	2.34%	B
JetBlue Airways	1,645	76.6%	71 min	1.28%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	279	76.3%	39 min	0.36%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	290	61.9%	79 min	2.76%	D

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 16 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–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm84 flights73.2%
2pm–5pm77 flights57.1%
5pm–8pm38 flights56.8%
8pm–5am90 flights57.1%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 73.2% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 90 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on SJU to FLL through the year

Jul–Sep 202566 flights75.4%
Oct–Dec 202568 flights80.6%
Jan–Mar 2026117 flights42.9%
Apr–Jun 202639 flights62.2%

Scale runs 35% 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 61.9% on time across 290 flights.

Spirit on SJU to FLL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 42.9%, a swing of 38 points on roughly 73 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, Friday is the strongest day at 70.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.5%. 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 54% of the 8,475 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
54%
National Airspace System
29%
Carrier
17%
Security
0%
Extreme weather
0%

54% 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 8,475 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 8,475 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 2.76%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 16.7% 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 1,046 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 55.4% on time across 291 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 290 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 SJU to FLL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 290 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 61.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 281 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