Carrier route record
NKORD→SJU
Spirit Airlines · Chicago to San Juan
- Flights
- 297
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on ORD to SJU draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three 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 297 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 665 at 78.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on ORD to SJU runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 149 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 276 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.8%
Every carrier on ORD to SJU, 1,403 flights
These figures cover 297 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% 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 ORD to SJU
Spirit flew 297 of the 1,403 flights on ORD to SJU, about 21% of it. Its 62.7% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.9% to Spirit at 62.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 72.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 429 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 665 | 78.9% | 45 min | 0.30% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 20 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 429 | 72.9% | 64 min | 1.40% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 297 | 62.7% | 74 min | 6.73% | D− |
United leads American by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 56 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am46 flights76.2%
- 8am–11am36 flights82.9%
- 11am–2pm142 flights65.0%
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 5pm–8pm30 flights—
- 8pm–5am40 flights26.7%
Scale runs 20% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 26.7% on time, against 82.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 142 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on ORD to SJU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202584 flights69.9%
- Oct–Dec 202558 flights66.7%
- Jan–Mar 2026110 flights56.8%
- Apr–Jun 202645 flights56.1%
Scale runs 50% 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 62.7% on time across 297 flights.
Spirit on ORD to SJU did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.9% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 56.1%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 74 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 69.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.1%. 15 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 7,640 reported delay minutes.
- 33%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
33% 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 2,550 minutes out of 7,640, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,640 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.73%, 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. 13.4% 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.
At 2,072 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.3% on time across 294 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 297 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 ORD to SJU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.73% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 276 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to SJU, every carrier
- Spirit on SJU to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to SJU78.9%
- American Airlines on ORD to SJU72.9%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.