Carrier route record
NKTPA→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Tampa to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 823
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on TPA to FLL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 823 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on TPA to FLL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 70 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 796 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on TPA to FLL, 1,418 flights
These figures cover 823 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 TPA to FLL
Spirit flew 823 of the 1,418 flights on TPA to FLL, most of the route. Its 70.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 89.0% to Southwest at 68.5%. 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 | 231 | 89.0% | 90 min | 0.87% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 823 | 70.6% | 67 min | 3.28% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 68.5% | 59 min | 2.20% | C |
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 45 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–8am153 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am154 flights77.4%
- 11am–2pm36 flights68.6%
- 2pm–5pm87 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm146 flights49.3%
- 8pm–5am247 flights63.5%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.3% on time, against 94.0% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 247 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 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.5%. 17 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 51% of the 16,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
51% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 15,659 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 5,329 minutes out of 16,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.28%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 12.3% 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.
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 70.3% on time across 826 flights, within half 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. 823 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 3.28% 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. 796 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 FLL89.0%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to FLL68.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.