Carrier route record
NKSJU→EWR
Spirit Airlines · San Juan to Newark
- Flights
- 146
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on SJU to EWR draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three 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 146 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,113 at 76.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on SJU to EWR runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 140 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 132 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.6%
Every carrier on SJU to EWR, 2,100 flights
These figures cover 146 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.2% 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 SJU to EWR
Spirit flew 146 of the 2,100 flights on SJU to EWR, about 7% of it. Its 63.6% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 76.5% to Spirit at 63.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 | 1,113 | 76.5% | 90 min | 2.70% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 626 | 75.4% | 80 min | 2.88% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 215 | 69.9% | 67 min | 2.33% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 146 | 63.6% | 79 min | 8.90% | D− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 76.5%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 22 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm38 flights61.8%
- 5pm–8pm59 flights72.2%
- 8pm–5am41 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 72.2% for the 5pm–8pm 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 59 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on SJU to EWR through the year
- Jul–Sep 202520 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202514 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights66.2%
- Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 70%. 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 63.6% on time across 146 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on SJU to EWR logged 20 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 14 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 90 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 22 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 63.6% annual figure is the one to use.
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 3,782 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
35% 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 1,331 minutes out of 3,782, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,782 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 8.90%, 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. 18.2% 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 1,608 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 67.9% on time across 146 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 146 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 SJU to EWR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 132 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SJU to EWR, every carrier
- Spirit on EWR to SJU, the return leg
- United Airlines on SJU to EWR76.5%
- JetBlue Airways on SJU to EWR75.4%
- Frontier Airlines on SJU to EWR69.9%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.