Carrier route record
NKDFW→EWR
Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Newark
- Flights
- 245
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DFW to EWR draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 245 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,805 at 78.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on DFW to EWR runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 112 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 233 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.90%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.9%
Every carrier on DFW to EWR, 3,633 flights
These figures cover 245 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.2% 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 DFW to EWR
Spirit flew 245 of the 3,633 flights on DFW to EWR, about 7% of it. Its 66.1% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 84.3% to Spirit at 66.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,440 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 84.3% | 54 min | 0.85% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,805 | 78.3% | 88 min | 2.83% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 25 | 78.3% | 282 min | 4.00% | B− |
| American Airlines | 1,440 | 66.2% | 78 min | 4.03% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 245 | 66.1% | 70 min | 4.90% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 4.0% 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 37 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am33 flights81.8%
- 8am–11am47 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm75 flights66.2%
- 2pm–5pm55 flights50.0%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights48.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.5% on time, against 85.1% 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 75 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DFW to EWR through the year
- Jul–Sep 202528 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025102 flights71.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights64.6%
- Apr–Jun 202625 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. 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 66.1% on time across 245 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on DFW to EWR logged 28 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 102 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 90 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 25 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 66.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 69.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 52.8%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on DFW to EWR runs when it is late
When Spirit on DFW to EWR is late it tends to be very late: 40 of its 79 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 13 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early49 flights21.0%
- Within 15 min105 flights45.1%
- 15–29 min late19 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late20 flights8.6%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights11.6%
- 2+ hours late13 flights5.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 233 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 71 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 4 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 12 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 EWR.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on DFW to EWR
The latest arrival of the period was on 5 December 2025, 3 hours 30 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 5 December 2025 | 3 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 September 2025 | 2 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 April 2026 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 2 hours 46 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 September 2025 | 2 hours 43 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 5,491 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
57% 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 3,155 minutes out of 5,491, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,491 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.90%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
17.2% 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 1,372 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 runs 66.2% on time across 243 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. 245 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 DFW to EWR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 233 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to EWR, every carrier
- Spirit on EWR to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to EWR84.3%
- United Airlines on DFW to EWR78.3%
- American Airlines on DFW to EWR66.2%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.