Carrier route record

NKCMH→MCO

Spirit Airlines · Columbus to Orlando

Flights: 387
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on CMH 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 387 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on CMH to MCO runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 378 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.33%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.9%

Every carrier on CMH to MCO, 2,168 flights

These figures cover 387 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 CMH to MCO

Spirit flew 387 of the 2,168 flights on CMH to MCO, about 18% of it. Its 72.2% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.1% to Spirit at 72.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on CMH to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	28	82.1%	71 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,524	80.0%	65 min	1.05%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	229	72.6%	103 min	2.62%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)	387	72.2%	85 min	2.33%	C

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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am125 flights80.3%
8am–11am64 flights84.4%
11am–2pm51 flights62.7%
2pm–5pm6 flights—
5pm–8pm93 flights62.4%
8pm–5am48 flights63.8%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.4% on time, against 84.4% for the 8am–11am 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 125 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on CMH to MCO through the year

Jul–Sep 2025152 flights76.3%
Oct–Dec 2025112 flights68.8%
Jan–Mar 202694 flights71.6%
Apr–Jun 202629 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 80%. 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 72.2% on time across 387 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on CMH to MCO held fairly steady: 76.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 68.8% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 71.6% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.4%. 19 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 8,968 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
6%

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 8,968 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 8,968 reported delay minutes.

37% 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 3,355 minutes out of 8,968, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 2.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 12.2% 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 802 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 61.8% on time across 387 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 387 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 CMH to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 387 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 378 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