Carrier route record

NKEWR→DFW

Spirit Airlines · Newark to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 285
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on EWR to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 285 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,758 at 80.6% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on EWR to DFW runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 272 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.2%

Every carrier on EWR to DFW, 3,571 flights

These figures cover 285 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% 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 DFW

Spirit flew 285 of the 3,571 flights on EWR to DFW, about 8% of it. Its 68.8% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.8% to Frontier at 63.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on EWR to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	34	81.8%	49 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	1,758	80.6%	77 min	2.62%	B
American Airlines	1,437	80.1%	92 min	4.18%	B−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	285	68.8%	81 min	4.56%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	57	63.6%	164 min	1.75%	D

American Airlines cancels 4.2% 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.

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 285 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's EWR to DFW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 68.8% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Spirit on EWR to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 202570 flights81.2%
Oct–Dec 2025101 flights63.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights65.0%
Apr–Jun 202624 flights—

Scale runs 55% 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 68.8% on time across 285 flights.

Spirit on EWR to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 81.2% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 63.0%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 95 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.5%. 18 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 6,858 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
40%
Carrier
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

40% 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 2,775 minutes out of 6,858, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,858 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 4.56%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.4% 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 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. 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 65.3% on time across 286 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 285 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 DFW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.56% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 272 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