Carrier route record
NKRDU→EWR
Spirit Airlines · Raleigh to Newark
- Flights
- 219
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on RDU to EWR earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 54.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 219 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on RDU to EWR runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 235 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
54.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 196 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
10.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on RDU to EWR, 1,975 flights
These figures cover 219 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 24.5% 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 RDU to EWR
Spirit flew 219 of the 1,975 flights on RDU to EWR, about 11% of it. Its 54.1% on time is 21 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 86.1% to Spirit at 54.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 239 | 86.1% | 50 min | 3.35% | A− |
| United Airlines | 1,517 | 75.9% | 100 min | 2.24% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 219 | 54.1% | 82 min | 10.50% | F− |
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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm38 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm140 flights46.2%
- 8pm–5am41 flights62.5%
Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.2% on time, against 70.3% for the 2pm–5pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 140 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on RDU to EWR through the year
- Jul–Sep 202557 flights50.9%
- Oct–Dec 202565 flights61.4%
- Jan–Mar 202679 flights54.2%
- Apr–Jun 202618 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 65%. 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 54.1% on time across 219 flights.
Spirit on RDU to EWR did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 61.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 50.9%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 73 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, Monday is the strongest day at 65.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 50.0%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 7,381 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.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Carrier
36% 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 7,381 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 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 7,381 reported delay minutes.
57% 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 4,217 minutes out of 7,381, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 10.50%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 24.5% 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 416 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 60.8% on time across 220 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 219 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 RDU to EWR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 10.50% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 196 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to EWR, every carrier
- Spirit on EWR to RDU, the return leg
- Republic Airways on RDU to EWR86.1%
- United Airlines on RDU to EWR75.9%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- 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.