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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

NKEWR→ORD

Spirit Airlines · Newark to Chicago

Flights
149
Period
September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route
2%
Carriers
5
F−GRADE

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

Spirit on EWR to ORD earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 51.6% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 26 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average close to two hours. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 149 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 924 at 76.8% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.8% on time across 924 flights.

Key figures

On time

51.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 124 completed flights

Avg delay

102 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

16.78%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.7%

Every carrier on EWR to ORD, 6,123 flights

These figures cover 149 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 28.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on EWR to ORD

Spirit flew 149 of the 6,123 flights on EWR to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 51.6% on time is 19 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 76.8% to Spirit at 51.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 76.8% of the time; United Airlines manages 70.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,415 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on EWR to ORD
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
American Airlines92476.8%116 min4.76%B−
Envoy Air53372.2%84 min6.19%C−
United Airlines4,41570.3%80 min2.83%C
Republic Airwaysthin sample10252.8%82 min11.76%F−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample14951.6%102 min16.78%F−

Envoy Air cancels 6.2% 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.

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 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 149 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's EWR to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 51.6% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Spirit on EWR to ORD through the year

  • Oct–Dec 202546 flights55.0%
  • Jan–Mar 202680 flights45.3%
  • Apr–Jun 202623 flights—

Scale runs 35% to 60%. 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 51.6% on time across 149 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on EWR to ORD logged 46 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 80 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 23 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 51.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on EWR to ORD runs when it is late

When Spirit on EWR to ORD is late it tends to be very late: 35 of its 60 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 16 were two hours or more.

  • 15+ min early18 flights14.5%
  • Within 15 min46 flights37.1%
  • 15–29 min late10 flights8.1%
  • 30–59 min late15 flights12.1%
  • 1–2 hours late19 flights15.3%
  • 2+ hours late16 flights12.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 124 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 54 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 4 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 10 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 ORD.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on EWR to ORD

The latest arrival of the period was on 28 March 2026, 18 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across March, November, January and February, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on EWR to ORD in the period
DateArrived late byLargest filed cause
28 March 202618 hours 41 minutesCarrier
11 November 20254 hours 17 minutesNational Airspace System
30 November 20254 hours 14 minutesNational Airspace System
18 January 20263 hours 27 minutesLate-arriving aircraft
17 February 20263 hours 22 minutesLate-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 6,140 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

  • National Airspace System
    44%
  • Late-arriving aircraft
    29%
  • Carrier
    27%
  • Extreme weather
    0%

44% 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 2,726 minutes out of 6,140, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,140 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 16.78%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in six 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

28.2% 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.

The 719 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 45.6% on time across 150 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 149 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 ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 16.78% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 124 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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.