Carrier route record

NKEWR→RDU

Spirit Airlines · Newark to Raleigh

Flights: 180
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on EWR to RDU draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two 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 180 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on EWR to RDU runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 182 extra late arrivals.

On time

59.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 164 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

8.33%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.7%

Every carrier on EWR to RDU, 1,994 flights

These figures cover 180 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.5% 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 RDU

Spirit flew 180 of the 1,994 flights on EWR to RDU, about 9% of it. Its 59.1% on time is 17 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 Republic at 94.3% to Spirit at 59.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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 RDU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	273	94.3%	50 min	4.40%	A−
United Airlines	1,541	74.2%	78 min	2.66%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	180	59.1%	70 min	8.33%	D−

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 37 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am35 flights85.3%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm34 flights63.6%
2pm–5pm111 flights48.5%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.3% of the time, against 48.5% for the afternoon window. That is 37 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 111 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on EWR to RDU through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202566 flights66.1%
Jan–Mar 202679 flights55.6%
Apr–Jun 202618 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 70%. 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 59.1% on time across 180 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on EWR to RDU logged 17 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 66 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 79 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 18 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 59.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 64.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 54.8%, a spread of 10 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

The 67 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 32 an hour or more.

15+ min early34 flights20.7%
Within 15 min63 flights38.4%
15–29 min late17 flights10.4%
30–59 min late18 flights11.0%
1–2 hours late21 flights12.8%
2+ hours late11 flights6.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 164 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 62 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 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 RDU.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on EWR to RDU

The latest arrival of the period was on 4 April 2026, 5 hours 26 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on EWR to RDU in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
4 April 2026	5 hours 26 minutes	Carrier
18 January 2026	3 hours 17 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 March 2026	3 hours 14 minutes	Carrier
20 April 2026	3 hours 1 minute	Carrier
9 November 2025	2 hours 40 minutes	National Airspace System

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 4,695 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
25%
Security
0%

40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,695 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 4,695 reported delay minutes.

35% 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 1,638 minutes out of 4,695, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 8.33%, 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

19.5% 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 416 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 56.2% on time across 179 flights, within 3 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. 180 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 RDU

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.33% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 164 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures