Route reliability record
SRQ→EWR
Sarasota to Newark
- Flights
- 929
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,034 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 929 SRQ to EWR flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SRQ to EWR: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Friday flights 91.7%, against 86.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 905 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
87.4% on time across 799 flights
These figures cover 929 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SRQ to EWR
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 799 | 87.4% | 84 min | 1.25% | A |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 130 | 80.3% | 119 min | 10.00% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on SRQ to EWR
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sarasota to Newark
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SRQ → EWRSarasota to Newark | United Airlines | 86.3% | 87.4% | 1.25% | 5am–8am, Fri | UA 2612 12:01 |
| 2. TPA → JFKTampa to New York | Delta Air Lines | 80.7% | 82.8% | 2.56% | 5am–8am, Fri | DL 2475 07:16 |
| 3. TPA → LGATampa to New York | American Airlines | 76.1% | 78.5% | 3.04% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. TPA → EWRTampa to Newark | United Airlines | 75.9% | 77.4% | 1.98% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 2458 20:05 |
| 5. TPA → JFKTampa to New York | JetBlue Airways | 74.0% | 77.1% | 4.02% | 5am–8am, Fri | B6 126 06:45 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 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–8am364 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am117 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm247 flights83.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm201 flights75.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 75.4% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 77.8% on time, against 96.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 91.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.7%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 11,025 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,769 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,034 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.0% on time across 929 flights, 7 points below 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. 929 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in EWR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 929 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 86.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 905 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SRQ to EWR questions
How often is SRQ to EWR delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.5% of the 929 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SRQ to EWR compared with the rest of the country?
86.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SRQ to EWR?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.4%, 18 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on SRQ to EWR?
December is the weakest month at 77.8% on time, compared with 96.7% in September. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to SRQ — the return legseparate record
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SRQ to EWR87.4%
- Republic Airways on SRQ to EWR80.3%
- SRQ to ATL, a related route88.9%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- SRQ to CLT, a related route85.2%
- United Airlines on-time record87.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SRQ to EWR and EWR to SRQ are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.