Carrier route record

NKEWR→CHS

Spirit Airlines · Newark to Charleston

Flights: 275
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 20%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on EWR to CHS sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 275 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on EWR to CHS runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 43 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 258 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.18%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.8%

Every carrier on EWR to CHS, 1,362 flights

These figures cover 275 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 EWR to CHS

Spirit flew 275 of the 1,362 flights on EWR to CHS, about 20% of it. Its 73.3% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.7% to Spirit at 73.3%. 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 EWR to CHS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	802	81.7%	77 min	1.50%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	285	80.2%	81 min	7.37%	B−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	275	73.3%	65 min	6.18%	C−

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 14 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–8am26 flights—
8am–11am54 flights72.5%
11am–2pm52 flights62.0%
2pm–5pm117 flights76.1%
5pm–8pm20 flights—
8pm–5am6 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 62.0% on time against 76.1% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 117 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on EWR to CHS through the year

Jul–Sep 202557 flights71.7%
Oct–Dec 2025118 flights76.8%
Jan–Mar 202676 flights65.7%
Apr–Jun 202624 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 73.3% on time across 275 flights.

Spirit on EWR to CHS did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 65.7%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 92 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 57.6%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 4,502 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
39%
Carrier
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
Security
2%
Extreme weather
0%

39% 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 1,735 minutes out of 4,502, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,502 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,542 of the 4,502 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 6.18%, 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. 10.5% 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.

The 628 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 62.6% on time across 275 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 275 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 CHS

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.18% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 258 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