Carrier route record
NKEWR→ATL
Spirit Airlines · Newark to Atlanta
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on EWR to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,038 at 79.3% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.3% on time across 3,038 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 331 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.9%
Every carrier on EWR to ATL, 6,252 flights
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on EWR to ATL
Spirit flew 363 of the 6,252 flights on EWR to ATL, about 6% of it. Its 70.1% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 86.1% to Spirit at 70.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 70.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 708 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 119 | 86.1% | 42 min | 2.52% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,038 | 79.3% | 95 min | 3.95% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,024 | 76.0% | 84 min | 2.67% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 708 | 70.8% | 95 min | 4.66% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 363 | 70.1% | 77 min | 8.54% | C− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 4.7% 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 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am148 flights88.1%
- 8am–11am30 flights66.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm14 flights—
- 5pm–8pm136 flights56.7%
- 8pm–5am35 flights51.5%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.5% on time, against 88.1% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 148 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on EWR to ATL through the year
December is the weak month at 56.7% on time, against 93.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 51.0%, a spread of 34 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on EWR to ATL runs when it is late
Spirit on EWR to ATL often beats the schedule: 115 of 331 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 99 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 34 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early115 flights34.7%
- Within 15 min117 flights35.3%
- 15–29 min late24 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late34 flights10.3%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights6.9%
- 2+ hours late18 flights5.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 331 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 103 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 15 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on EWR to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 December 2025, 5 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 December 2025 | 5 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 October 2025 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 January 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 February 2026 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,615 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
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 2,625 minutes out of 7,615, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,615 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,130 of the 7,615 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 8.54%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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
12.4% 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 746 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 64.0% on time across 358 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 EWR to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.54% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 331 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to ATL, every carrier
- Spirit on ATL to EWR, the return leg
- Republic Airways on EWR to ATL86.1%
- Delta Air Lines on EWR to ATL79.3%
- United Airlines on EWR to ATL76.0%
- Frontier Airlines on EWR to ATL70.8%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.