Carrier route record

NKAUS→EWR

Spirit Airlines · Austin to Newark

Flights: 348
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on AUS to EWR earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 22 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on AUS to EWR runs 22 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 222 extra late arrivals.

On time

55.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 325 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.32%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.0%

Every carrier on AUS to EWR, 2,104 flights

These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.6% 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 AUS to EWR

Spirit flew 348 of the 2,104 flights on AUS to EWR, about 17% of it. Its 55.4% on time is 20 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.8% to Spirit at 55.4%. 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 AUS to EWR
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,737	78.8%	97 min	1.96%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	19	73.7%	59 min	0.00%	C+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	348	55.4%	88 min	6.32%	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 39 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–8am96 flights74.1%
8am–11am33 flights78.1%
11am–2pm133 flights45.6%
2pm–5pm43 flights45.0%
5pm–8pm43 flights39.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 39.5% on time, against 78.1% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 133 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on AUS to EWR through the year

Jul–Sep 202569 flights55.9%
Oct–Dec 2025117 flights52.7%
Jan–Mar 2026116 flights56.2%
Apr–Jun 202646 flights60.0%

Scale runs 45% to 65%. 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 55.4% on time across 348 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on AUS to EWR held fairly steady: 55.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 52.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 56.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 60.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 66.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 48.1%. 18 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 52% of the 13,000 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.

National Airspace System
52%
Carrier
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
0%
Security
0%

52% 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 6,631 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 12,752 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 6.32%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 20.6% 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 1,504 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 70.3% on time across 349 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 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 AUS to EWR

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 325 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