Carrier route record

NKCLT→MCO

Spirit Airlines · Charlotte to Orlando

Flights: 471
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 471 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 589 at 71.9% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on CLT to MCO runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 71 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 451 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.03%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.6%

Every carrier on CLT to MCO, 4,736 flights

These figures cover 471 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 CLT to MCO

Spirit flew 471 of the 4,736 flights on CLT to MCO, about 10% of it. Its 70.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 71.9% to American at 70.4%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.

On-time performance by carrier on CLT to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines	589	71.9%	94 min	2.72%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)	471	70.5%	64 min	4.03%	C−
American Airlines	3,676	70.4%	73 min	1.66%	C

No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 71.9%, 2 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 25 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am65 flights87.7%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm93 flights65.9%
2pm–5pm117 flights71.9%
5pm–8pm117 flights62.4%
8pm–5am78 flights70.3%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.4% on time, against 87.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 117 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on CLT to MCO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, February worst

February is the weak month at 48.9% on time, against 85.1% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 70 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.5%. 21 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 48% of the 8,455 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.

National Airspace System
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Carrier
16%
Extreme weather
0%
Security
0%

35% 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 8,455 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 8,455 reported delay minutes.

48% 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 4,079 minutes out of 8,455, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 4.03%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 10.9% 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 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 72.3% on time across 470 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 471 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 4.03% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 451 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures