Carrier route record
NKPHL→SJU
Spirit Airlines · Philadelphia to San Juan
- Flights
- 216
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on PHL to SJU draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two 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 216 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 701 at 68.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on PHL to SJU runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 178 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 199 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
63.1%
Every carrier on PHL to SJU, 1,879 flights
These figures cover 216 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.1% 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 PHL to SJU
Spirit flew 216 of the 1,879 flights on PHL to SJU, about 11% of it. Its 59.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 63.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 78.1% to Frontier at 57.9%. 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 68.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 57.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 865 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 97 | 78.1% | 138 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 701 | 68.2% | 98 min | 2.00% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 216 | 59.8% | 69 min | 7.87% | D− |
| Frontier Airlines | 865 | 57.9% | 75 min | 3.35% | D− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.4% 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 42 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm38 flights81.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm34 flights39.4%
- 8pm–5am120 flights53.8%
Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 39.4% on time, against 81.6% for the 11am–2pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 120 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on PHL to SJU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202572 flights57.7%
- 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 59.8% on time across 216 flights.
Spirit on PHL to SJU did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 83.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 49.3%, a swing of 35 points on roughly 72 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.
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 5,533 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
41% 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 5,533 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 5,533 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 1,845 minutes out of 5,533, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 7.87%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 17.1% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.5% on time across 216 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 216 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 7.87% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 199 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 SJU68.2%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to SJU57.9%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.