Carrier route record

NKEWR→IAH

Spirit Airlines · Newark to Houston

Flights: 264
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 2

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

Spirit on EWR to IAH draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 264 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on EWR to IAH runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 242 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.95%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.6%

Every carrier on EWR to IAH, 3,798 flights

These figures cover 264 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 IAH

Spirit flew 264 of the 3,798 flights on EWR to IAH, about 7% of it. Its 67.8% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.4% to Spirit at 67.8%.

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 IAH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	3,534	80.4%	74 min	1.64%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	264	67.8%	88 min	7.95%	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 21 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–8am1 flights—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm142 flights74.6%
2pm–5pm12 flights—
5pm–8pm74 flights62.7%
8pm–5am35 flights53.1%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 74.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 142 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on EWR to IAH through the year

Jul–Sep 202586 flights71.6%
Oct–Dec 202576 flights62.0%
Jan–Mar 202674 flights71.2%
Apr–Jun 202628 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 75%. 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 67.8% on time across 264 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on EWR to IAH held fairly steady: 71.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 62.0% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 71.2% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 60.0%. 16 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 6,836 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
39%
Carrier
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
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 2,660 minutes out of 6,836, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,836 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 7.95%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.5% 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 1,400 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 75.5% on time across 266 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 264 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 IAH

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 242 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