Carrier route record
NKATL→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Atlanta to Orlando
- Flights
- 470
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 470 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,095 at 75.4% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.4% on time across 1,095 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 452 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.7%
Every carrier on ATL to MCO, 8,211 flights
These figures cover 470 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 ATL to MCO
Spirit flew 470 of the 8,211 flights on ATL to MCO, about 6% of it. Its 71.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 75.4% to Frontier at 65.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 75.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 65.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,181 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,095 | 75.4% | 61 min | 1.10% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 470 | 71.5% | 89 min | 3.62% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 5,465 | 70.7% | 64 min | 1.17% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,181 | 65.6% | 112 min | 1.61% | C |
Southwest leads Frontier by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 44 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am102 flights80.6%
- 8am–11am142 flights76.3%
- 11am–2pm58 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm69 flights85.5%
- 5pm–8pm82 flights41.2%
- 8pm–5am17 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 41.2% on time, against 85.5% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 142 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on ATL to MCO through the year
February is the weak month at 54.0% on time, against 80.4% in April. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Security
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 4,654 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,484 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.62%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 13.5% 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 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 64.5% on time across 471 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. 470 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 3.62% 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. 452 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 MCO75.4%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to MCO70.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to MCO65.6%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.