Carrier route record
NKIND→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Indianapolis to Orlando
- Flights
- 421
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on IND to MCO earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 421 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's IND to MCO record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 411 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.6%
Every carrier on IND to MCO, 2,408 flights
These figures cover 421 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 IND to MCO
Spirit flew 421 of the 2,408 flights on IND to MCO, about 17% of it. Its 84.7% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 84.7% to Frontier at 73.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 421 | 84.7% | 84 min | 2.14% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 28 | 82.1% | 33 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,623 | 79.6% | 61 min | 0.99% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 336 | 73.2% | 116 min | 2.38% | 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 52 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–8am141 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am93 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm63 flights95.2%
- 2pm–5pm48 flights83.0%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights43.1%
- 8pm–5am24 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 43.1% on time, against 95.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 141 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on IND to MCO through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 96.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 68 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.4%. 17 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 5,309 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
41% 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 5,309 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 5,309 reported delay minutes.
33% 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 1,758 minutes out of 5,309, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.14% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 829 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 75.3% on time across 424 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. 421 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 IND to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 421 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 411 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IND to MCO, every carrier
- Spirit on MCO to IND, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on IND to MCO79.6%
- Frontier Airlines on IND to MCO73.2%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.