Carrier route record
NKBWI→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Baltimore to Orlando
- Flights
- 593
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on BWI 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 593 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 3,581 at 76.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on BWI to MCO runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 74 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 574 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on BWI to MCO, 4,713 flights
These figures cover 593 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 BWI to MCO
Spirit flew 593 of the 4,713 flights on BWI to MCO, about 13% of it. Its 70.2% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.9% to Spirit at 70.2%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 3,581 | 76.9% | 64 min | 1.98% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 539 | 73.1% | 93 min | 2.60% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 593 | 70.2% | 74 min | 3.04% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 76.9%, 4 points 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 45 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am59 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am130 flights68.0%
- 11am–2pm125 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm62 flights48.3%
- 8pm–5am133 flights61.7%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.3% on time, against 93.2% for the 5am–8am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 133 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on BWI to MCO through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 78 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.3%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 5,486 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 12,691 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 12.0% 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.
The 787 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 65.9% on time across 589 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 593 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 BWI to MCO
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 574 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to MCO, every carrier
- Spirit on MCO to BWI, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to MCO76.9%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to MCO73.1%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.