Carrier route record

NKRDU→EWR

Spirit Airlines · Raleigh to Newark

Flights: 179
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on RDU to EWR earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.2% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 179 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on RDU to EWR runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 211 extra late arrivals.

On time

56.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 160 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

10.61%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

76.5%

Every carrier on RDU to EWR, 1,993 flights

These figures cover 179 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 21.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on RDU to EWR

Spirit flew 179 of the 1,993 flights on RDU to EWR, about 9% of it. Its 56.2% on time is 20 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 86.4% to Spirit at 56.2%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on RDU to EWR
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	271	86.4%	67 min	4.80%	A−
United Airlines	1,543	77.0%	118 min	2.07%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	179	56.2%	76 min	10.61%	D−

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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm33 flights65.6%
5pm–8pm111 flights48.9%
8pm–5am35 flights67.6%

Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.9% on time, against 67.6% for the 8pm–5am 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 111 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on RDU to EWR through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202565 flights61.4%
Jan–Mar 202679 flights54.2%
Apr–Jun 202618 flights—

Scale runs 45% 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 56.2% on time across 179 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on RDU to EWR logged 17 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 65 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 79 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 18 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 56.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 67.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 51.6%, a spread of 16 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on RDU to EWR runs when it is late

Spirit on RDU to EWR often beats the schedule: 49 of 160 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 70 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 34 an hour or more.

15+ min early49 flights30.6%
Within 15 min41 flights25.6%
15–29 min late20 flights12.5%
30–59 min late16 flights10.0%
1–2 hours late22 flights13.8%
2+ hours late12 flights7.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 160 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

15 of 81 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 4 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on RDU to EWR

The latest arrival of the period was on 4 April 2026, 5 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Four of the five worst days fell in April 2026.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on RDU to EWR in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
4 April 2026	5 hours 6 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
5 April 2026	5 hours 5 minutes	National Airspace System
20 April 2026	3 hours 20 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 April 2026	3 hours 9 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 March 2026	2 hours 58 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 5,346 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
49%
National Airspace System
47%
Carrier
4%

49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,346 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 5,346 reported delay minutes.

47% 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 2,517 minutes out of 5,346, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 10.61%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in nine 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

21.2% 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 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 59.1% on time across 180 flights, within 3 points 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. 179 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 10.61% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 160 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures