Carrier route record
NKORD→SJU
Spirit Airlines · Chicago to San Juan
- Flights
- 232
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 232 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 657 at 79.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on ORD to SJU runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 165 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 212 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on ORD to SJU, 1,390 flights
These figures cover 232 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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 ORD to SJU
Spirit flew 232 of the 1,390 flights on ORD to SJU, about 17% of it. Its 60.8% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.2% to Spirit at 60.8%. 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 79.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.2%. 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 | 657 | 79.2% | 52 min | 0.30% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 429 | 71.2% | 64 min | 1.63% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 72 | 66.7% | 189 min | 4.17% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 232 | 60.8% | 76 min | 8.19% | D− |
United leads American by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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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 56 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am37 flights69.7%
- 8am–11am36 flights82.9%
- 11am–2pm116 flights59.5%
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 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 116 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on ORD to SJU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202519 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202558 flights66.7%
- Jan–Mar 2026110 flights56.8%
- Apr–Jun 202645 flights56.1%
Scale runs 50% 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 60.8% on time across 232 flights.
Spirit on ORD to SJU did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 56.1%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 77 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on ORD to SJU runs when it is late
The 83 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early51 flights24.1%
- Within 15 min78 flights36.8%
- 15–29 min late21 flights9.9%
- 30–59 min late32 flights15.1%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights8.0%
- 2+ hours late13 flights6.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 212 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 80 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 13 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 SJU.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on ORD to SJU
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 April 2026, 17 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in April 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 April 2026 | 17 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 March 2026 | 6 hours 15 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 2 April 2026 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 14 April 2026 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 March 2026 | 3 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 6,264 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,229 of the 6,264 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,264 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 8.19%, 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
14.2% 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.
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 77.8% on time across 227 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 232 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 8.19% 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. 212 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 SJU79.2%
- American Airlines on ORD to SJU71.2%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.