Carrier route record
NKCLT→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Charlotte to Orlando
- Flights
- 371
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on CLT 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 371 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 677 at 73.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Spirit on CLT to MCO runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 351 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.12%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.6%
Every carrier on CLT to MCO, 4,734 flights
These figures cover 371 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on CLT to MCO
Spirit flew 371 of the 4,734 flights on CLT to MCO, about 8% of it. Its 68.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 73.0% to Spirit at 68.9%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 677 | 73.0% | 105 min | 3.69% | C− |
| American Airlines | 3,686 | 71.6% | 74 min | 1.71% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 371 | 68.9% | 60 min | 5.12% | C− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.7% 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 371 flights.
- 5am–8am11 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm93 flights65.9%
- 2pm–5pm112 flights70.6%
- 5pm–8pm91 flights67.5%
- 8pm–5am64 flights68.3%
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 70.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.
Across the year
Spirit on CLT to MCO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202549 flights85.1%
- Oct–Dec 202595 flights73.9%
- Jan–Mar 2026154 flights59.0%
- Apr–Jun 202673 flights71.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 68.9% on time across 371 flights.
Spirit on CLT to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 85.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 59.0%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 93 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on CLT to MCO runs when it is late
Spirit on CLT to MCO often beats the schedule: 90 of 351 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 109 late arrivals split 39 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early90 flights25.6%
- Within 15 min152 flights43.3%
- 15–29 min late39 flights11.1%
- 30–59 min late33 flights9.4%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights7.4%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 351 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 107 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 12 made it up before arrival. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on CLT to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 November 2025, 7 hours 21 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 November 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 November 2025 | 7 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 April 2026 | 5 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 November 2025 | 3 hours 25 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 20 February 2026 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 November 2025 | 2 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 6,517 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,517 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 to one. The split is drawn from 6,517 reported delay minutes.
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 2,780 minutes out of 6,517, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.12%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
10.5% 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 468 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 72.5% on time across 370 flights, 4 points above 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. 371 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 CLT to MCO
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.12% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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
- CLT to MCO, every carrier
- Spirit on MCO to CLT, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to MCO73.0%
- American Airlines on CLT to MCO71.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.