Carrier route record

NKTPA→LAS

Spirit Airlines · Tampa to Las Vegas

Flights: 230
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
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 LAS lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 230 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on TPA to LAS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 229 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.3%

Every carrier on TPA to LAS, 1,034 flights

These figures cover 230 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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 TPA to LAS

Spirit flew 230 of the 1,034 flights on TPA to LAS, about 22% of it. Its 80.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 80.8% to Frontier at 79.1%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	230	80.8%	85 min	0.43%	B+
Southwest Airlines	687	80.3%	48 min	0.44%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	117	79.1%	65 min	1.71%	B

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 230 flights.

5am–8am64 flights82.8%
8am–11am28 flights—
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm5 flights—
5pm–8pm106 flights78.3%
8pm–5am25 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 82.8% on time for the 5am–8am window against 78.3% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 106 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on TPA to LAS through the year

Jul–Sep 2025120 flights77.5%
Oct–Dec 2025103 flights85.4%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—

Scale runs 70% 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 80.8% on time across 230 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on TPA to LAS logged 120 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 103 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.7%. 19 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 3,740 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
51%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

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 3,740 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 3,740 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.8% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,984 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.8% on time across 232 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 230 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 LAS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 230 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 80.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 229 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