Carrier route record
NKEWR→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Newark to Detroit
- Flights
- 433
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on EWR to DTW 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 433 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,558 at 84.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on EWR to DTW runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 116 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 396 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.9%
Every carrier on EWR to DTW, 3,660 flights
These figures cover 433 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% 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 EWR to DTW
Spirit flew 433 of the 3,660 flights on EWR to DTW, about 12% of it. Its 65.7% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 84.4% to Spirit at 65.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,558 | 84.4% | 70 min | 6.68% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,612 | 79.6% | 108 min | 4.03% | B− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 57 | 75.0% | 47 min | 1.75% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 433 | 65.7% | 75 min | 8.31% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.7% 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 39 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am119 flights66.7%
- 8am–11am23 flights—
- 11am–2pm55 flights90.6%
- 2pm–5pm59 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm13 flights—
- 8pm–5am164 flights51.7%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.7% on time, against 90.6% for the 11am–2pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 164 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on EWR to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 42.6% on time, against 89.7% 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.9%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on EWR to DTW runs when it is late
Spirit on EWR to DTW often beats the schedule: 115 of 396 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 136 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 49 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 52 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early115 flights29.0%
- Within 15 min145 flights36.6%
- 15–29 min late35 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late49 flights12.4%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights8.3%
- 2+ hours late19 flights4.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 396 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 122 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 11 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 25 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 DTW.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on EWR to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 October 2025, 12 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 October 2025 | 12 hours 49 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 December 2025 | 10 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 March 2026 | 4 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 April 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 4 April 2026 | 3 hours 24 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 62% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 1%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
62% 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 6,258 minutes out of 10,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 10,131 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 8.31%, 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
13.1% 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.
At 488 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 67.6% on time across 434 flights, within 2 points 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. 433 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 DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.31% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 396 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to EWR, the return leg
- Republic Airways on EWR to DTW84.4%
- Delta Air Lines on EWR to DTW79.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.