Carrier route record
NKCLT→EWR
Spirit Airlines · Charlotte to Newark
- Flights
- 345
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on CLT to EWR sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 345 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 724 at 82.0% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.0% on time across 724 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 320 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.9%
Every carrier on CLT to EWR, 3,690 flights
These figures cover 345 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on CLT to EWR
Spirit flew 345 of the 3,690 flights on CLT to EWR, about 9% of it. Its 74.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.0% to American at 71.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 82.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,831 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 724 | 82.0% | 89 min | 2.49% | B |
| Republic Airways | 790 | 81.0% | 97 min | 7.34% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 345 | 74.7% | 83 min | 7.25% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,831 | 71.5% | 77 min | 3.50% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 7.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 39 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am32 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am172 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm45 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm8 flights—
- 8pm–5am88 flights52.0%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.0% on time, against 90.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 172 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on CLT to EWR through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025121 flights81.4%
- Jan–Mar 2026150 flights69.5%
- Apr–Jun 202644 flights54.8%
Scale runs 45% 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 74.7% on time across 345 flights.
Spirit on CLT to EWR did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 81.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 54.8%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 115 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.5%, a spread of 31 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on CLT to EWR runs when it is late
Spirit on CLT to EWR often beats the schedule: 127 of 320 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 81 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 36 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early127 flights39.7%
- Within 15 min112 flights35.0%
- 15–29 min late23 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late22 flights6.9%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights6.6%
- 2+ hours late15 flights4.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 320 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 88 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on CLT to EWR
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 December 2025, 9 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 December 2025 | 9 hours 29 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 December 2025 | 7 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 5 hours 1 minute | National Airspace System |
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 24 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 March 2026 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 6,729 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,729 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 to one. The split is drawn from 6,729 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 2,421 minutes out of 6,729, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 7.25%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
11.2% 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.
The 529 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.2% on time across 347 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 345 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 CLT to EWR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 320 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to EWR, every carrier
- Spirit on EWR to CLT, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLT to EWR82.0%
- Republic Airways on CLT to EWR81.0%
- American Airlines on CLT to EWR71.5%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) 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.