Carrier route record
NKPHL→SJU
Spirit Airlines · Philadelphia to San Juan
- Flights
- 155
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on PHL to SJU draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 155 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 763 at 71.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on PHL to SJU runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 154 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
10.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
63.3%
Every carrier on PHL to SJU, 1,992 flights
These figures cover 155 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.3% 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 PHL to SJU
Spirit flew 155 of the 1,992 flights on PHL to SJU, about 8% of it. Its 61.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 63.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 71.4% to Frontier at 55.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 71.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 55.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 915 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 763 | 71.4% | 77 min | 1.97% | C |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 159 | 70.2% | 94 min | 4.40% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 155 | 61.9% | 67 min | 10.32% | D− |
| Frontier Airlines | 915 | 55.6% | 77 min | 3.17% | D− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.2% 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.
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 155 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's PHL to SJU record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 61.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Spirit on PHL to SJU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202511 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202538 flights83.8%
- Jan–Mar 202682 flights49.3%
- Apr–Jun 202624 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 90%. 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 61.9% on time across 155 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on PHL to SJU logged 11 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 38 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 82 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 24 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 61.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on PHL to SJU runs when it is late
Spirit on PHL to SJU often beats the schedule: 37 of 139 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 53 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early37 flights26.6%
- Within 15 min49 flights35.3%
- 15–29 min late10 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late19 flights13.7%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights12.9%
- 2+ hours late6 flights4.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 139 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 56 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. Only 2 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on PHL to SJU
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 4 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across December, February, April and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 40 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 February 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 December 2025 | 2 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 April 2026 | 2 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 January 2026 | 2 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 3,555 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,555 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 3,555 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 10.32%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in ten 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
17.3% 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 1,576 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 runs 60.9% on time across 154 flights, within about 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. 155 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 PHL to SJU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 10.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 139 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to SJU, every carrier
- Spirit on SJU to PHL, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHL to SJU71.4%
- JetBlue Airways on PHL to SJU70.2%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to SJU55.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.