Carrier route record
NKEWR→FLL
Spirit Airlines · Newark to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,074
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- 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 FLL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,074 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,678 at 78.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on EWR to FLL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 66 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,000 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.7%
Every carrier on EWR to FLL, 4,755 flights
These figures cover 1,074 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% 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 FLL
Spirit flew 1,074 of the 4,755 flights on EWR to FLL, about 23% of it. Its 71.0% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.7% to Spirit at 71.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.7% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 72.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,003 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,678 | 78.7% | 68 min | 2.17% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,003 | 72.4% | 80 min | 3.49% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 1,074 | 71.0% | 83 min | 6.80% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.5% 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am300 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am243 flights70.9%
- 11am–2pm157 flights69.1%
- 2pm–5pm60 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm241 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am73 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 89.0% 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 300 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on EWR to FLL through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 79.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.7%. 27 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 49% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 49%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 12,000 minutes out of 24,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 24,064 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.80%, 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. 13.0% 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 1,065 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 60.0% on time across 1,071 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. 1,074 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 FLL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,000 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to FLL, every carrier
- Spirit on FLL to EWR, the return leg
- United Airlines on EWR to FLL78.7%
- JetBlue Airways on EWR to FLL72.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.