Carrier route record
NKSJU→PHL
Spirit Airlines · San Juan to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 154
- 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 SJU to PHL 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 154 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 763 at 80.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on SJU to PHL runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 164 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 138 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
10.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.9%
Every carrier on SJU to PHL, 1,992 flights
These figures cover 154 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 SJU to PHL
Spirit flew 154 of the 1,992 flights on SJU to PHL, about 8% of it. Its 60.9% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 90.7% to Spirit at 60.9%. 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 80.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 63.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 916 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 159 | 90.7% | 65 min | 4.40% | A− |
| American Airlines | 763 | 80.3% | 100 min | 2.62% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 916 | 63.3% | 81 min | 3.17% | D− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 154 | 60.9% | 71 min | 10.39% | 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 154 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's SJU to PHL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 60.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Spirit on SJU to PHL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202511 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202538 flights81.1%
- Jan–Mar 202681 flights52.9%
- Apr–Jun 202624 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. 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 60.9% on time across 154 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on SJU to PHL logged 11 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 38 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 81 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 60.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on SJU to PHL runs when it is late
Spirit on SJU to PHL often beats the schedule: 43 of 138 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 54 late arrivals split 14 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early43 flights31.2%
- Within 15 min41 flights29.7%
- 15–29 min late14 flights10.1%
- 30–59 min late21 flights15.2%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights9.4%
- 2+ hours late6 flights4.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 138 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
7 of 57 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. 4 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on SJU to PHL
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 April 2026, 8 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 April 2026 | 8 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 3 hours 57 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 April 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 December 2025 | 2 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 3,845 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,845 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 3,845 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 10.39%, 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
13.8% 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 61.9% on time across 155 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. 154 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 PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 10.39% 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. 138 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SJU to PHL, every carrier
- Spirit on PHL to SJU, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on SJU to PHL90.7%
- American Airlines on SJU to PHL80.3%
- Frontier Airlines on SJU to PHL63.3%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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.