Carrier route record
NKPBI→EWR
Spirit Airlines · West Palm Beach to Newark
- Flights
- 120
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 3%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on PBI to EWR earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 51.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 26 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 120 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,773 at 76.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on PBI to EWR runs 26 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 262 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
51.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 105 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
12.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on PBI to EWR, 3,612 flights
These figures cover 120 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 23.8% 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 PBI to EWR
Spirit flew 120 of the 3,612 flights on PBI to EWR, about 3% of it. Its 51.4% on time is 23 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 76.3% to Spirit at 51.4%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,773 | 76.3% | 97 min | 2.24% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 719 | 70.9% | 77 min | 3.62% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 120 | 51.4% | 68 min | 12.50% | F− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 3.6% 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.
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 14 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am34 flights71.9%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm53 flights57.8%
- 2pm–5pm33 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 57.8% on time against 71.9% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 53 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on PBI to EWR through the year
- Oct–Dec 202527 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202680 flights45.7%
- Apr–Jun 202613 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 50%. 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 51.4% on time across 120 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on PBI to EWR logged 27 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 80 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 13 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 51.4% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 3,476 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 3,476 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 3,476 reported delay minutes.
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 1,164 minutes out of 3,476, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 12.50%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in eight 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. 23.8% 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.
The 1,024 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 51.5% on time across 120 flights, within half a point 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. 120 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 PBI to EWR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 12.50% 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. 105 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PBI to EWR, every carrier
- Spirit on EWR to PBI, the return leg
- United Airlines on PBI to EWR76.3%
- JetBlue Airways on PBI to EWR70.9%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.