Carrier route record

NKIND→EWR

Spirit Airlines · Indianapolis to Newark

Flights: 254
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on IND to EWR earns an A−. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 254 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's IND to EWR record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 239 completed flights

Avg delay

94 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.51%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

85.6%

Every carrier on IND to EWR, 2,205 flights

These figures cover 254 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 19 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on IND to EWR

Spirit flew 254 of the 2,205 flights on IND to EWR, about 12% of it. Its 89.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 100.0% to Republic at 85.0%. 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 IND to EWR
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	4	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	254	89.5%	94 min	5.51%	A−
Republic Airways	1,947	85.0%	76 min	4.67%	A−

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

5am–8am171 flights93.8%
8am–11am41 flights97.5%
11am–2pm8 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm34 flights54.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.8% on time, against 97.5% for the 8am–11am 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 171 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on IND to EWR through the year

Jul–Sep 202530 flights100.0%
Oct–Dec 2025114 flights84.5%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights90.5%
Apr–Jun 202626 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 89.5% on time across 254 flights.

Spirit on IND to EWR did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 84.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 85 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 97.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.3%, a spread of 14 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Spirit on IND to EWR often beats the schedule: 143 of 239 completed flights, 60%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 25 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.

15+ min early143 flights59.8%
Within 15 min71 flights29.7%
15–29 min late6 flights2.5%
30–59 min late7 flights2.9%
1–2 hours late7 flights2.9%
2+ hours late5 flights2.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 239 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

8 of 28 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. 5 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on IND to EWR

The latest arrival of the period was on 9 October 2025, 8 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on IND to EWR in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
9 October 2025	8 hours 55 minutes	National Airspace System
14 December 2025	6 hours 25 minutes	National Airspace System
29 November 2025	2 hours 53 minutes	National Airspace System
1 December 2025	2 hours 28 minutes	National Airspace System
30 November 2025	2 hours 5 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 73% of the 2,353 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
73%
Carrier
22%
Late-arriving aircraft
4%
Extreme weather
1%

73% 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 1,707 minutes out of 2,353, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,353 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 5.51%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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

5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 645 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 68.8% on time across 253 flights, 21 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 21 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 254 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 IND to EWR

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.51% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 239 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