Carrier route record
NKTPA→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Tampa to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 691
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on TPA to FLL 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 691 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on TPA to FLL runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 95 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 664 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.91%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on TPA to FLL, 1,410 flights
These figures cover 691 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% 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 TPA to FLL
Spirit flew 691 of the 1,410 flights on TPA to FLL, about 49% of it. Its 67.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 85.4% to Spirit at 67.8%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 355 | 85.4% | 119 min | 2.82% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 68.3% | 54 min | 2.20% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 691 | 67.8% | 65 min | 3.91% | C− |
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 44 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am93 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am149 flights76.6%
- 11am–2pm35 flights67.6%
- 2pm–5pm45 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm144 flights48.6%
- 8pm–5am225 flights61.6%
Scale runs 40% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.6% on time, against 92.3% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 225 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on TPA to FLL through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 87.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on TPA to FLL runs when it is late
The 214 late arrivals split 62 under half an hour, 65 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 87 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early114 flights17.2%
- Within 15 min336 flights50.6%
- 15–29 min late62 flights9.3%
- 30–59 min late65 flights9.8%
- 1–2 hours late60 flights9.0%
- 2+ hours late27 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 664 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 182 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 9 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 41 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 TPA to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 February 2026, 5 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 February 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 February 2026 | 4 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 3 hours 23 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 23 December 2025 | 3 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. The split is drawn from 13,973 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 4,882 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.91%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
13.1% 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.
At 197 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 68.8% on time across 692 flights, within about 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. 691 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 TPA to FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 664 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to TPA, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on TPA to FLL85.4%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to FLL68.3%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.