Carrier route record
NKDTW→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Detroit to Orlando
- Flights
- 956
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DTW to MCO lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 956 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 427 at 76.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on DTW to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 941 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on DTW to MCO, 3,680 flights
These figures cover 956 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on DTW to MCO
Spirit flew 956 of the 3,680 flights on DTW to MCO, about 26% of it. Its 78.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.4% to Southwest at 69.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 956 | 78.4% | 65 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 427 | 76.1% | 103 min | 1.41% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,170 | 74.6% | 71 min | 0.92% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 69.0% | 56 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 76.1%, 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 17 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am316 flights86.2%
- 8am–11am134 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm101 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm138 flights75.6%
- 5pm–8pm221 flights69.0%
- 8pm–5am46 flights78.3%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.2% of the time, against 69.0% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 316 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DTW to MCO through the year
January is the weak month at 63.7% on time, against 88.7% in October. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.6%. 13 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 37%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 4,880 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,231 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 5,140 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.63%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 957 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 69.4% on time across 950 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 956 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 DTW to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 956 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 78.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 941 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to MCO, every carrier
- Spirit on MCO to DTW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to MCO76.1%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to MCO74.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to MCO69.0%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.