Carrier route record
NKATL→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Atlanta to Orlando
- Flights
- 368
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on ATL to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 368 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,095 at 74.5% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.5% on time across 1,095 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 351 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.62%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on ATL to MCO, 8,267 flights
These figures cover 368 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 ATL to MCO
Spirit flew 368 of the 8,267 flights on ATL to MCO, about 4% of it. Its 73.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 74.5% to Frontier at 64.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 74.5% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,270 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,095 | 74.5% | 60 min | 1.19% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 368 | 73.5% | 87 min | 4.62% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 5,534 | 70.5% | 65 min | 1.32% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,270 | 64.8% | 117 min | 2.20% | D |
Southwest leads Frontier by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 43 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am95 flights80.2%
- 8am–11am92 flights75.3%
- 11am–2pm58 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm59 flights89.8%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights47.1%
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.1% on time, against 89.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 95 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on ATL to MCO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025120 flights73.3%
- Jan–Mar 2026168 flights68.8%
- Apr–Jun 202655 flights79.2%
Scale runs 60% 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 73.5% on time across 368 flights.
Spirit on ATL to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 79.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 68.8%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 123 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 68.6%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on ATL to MCO runs when it is late
Spirit on ATL to MCO often beats the schedule: 112 of 351 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 93 late arrivals split 28 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early112 flights31.9%
- Within 15 min146 flights41.6%
- 15–29 min late28 flights8.0%
- 30–59 min late24 flights6.8%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights4.8%
- 2+ hours late24 flights6.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 351 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
15 of 104 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on ATL to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 October 2025, 10 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 October 2025 | 10 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 October 2025 | 7 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 January 2026 | 4 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 March 2026 | 4 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 January 2026 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 55% of the 8,110 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,500 of the 8,110 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,110 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.62%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
11.7% 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 404 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 65.1% on time across 369 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 368 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 ATL to MCO
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.62% 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. 351 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MCO, every carrier
- Spirit on MCO to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to MCO74.5%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to MCO70.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to MCO64.8%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.