Carrier route record
NKMCO→ATL
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Atlanta
- Flights
- 369
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MCO to ATL draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 369 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 5,531 at 78.3% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.3% on time across 5,531 flights.
Key figures
On time
65.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on MCO to ATL, 8,259 flights
These figures cover 369 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on MCO to ATL
Spirit flew 369 of the 8,259 flights on MCO to ATL, about 4% of it. Its 65.1% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.3% to Spirit at 65.1%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 67.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,266 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 5,531 | 78.3% | 88 min | 1.39% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,093 | 69.9% | 64 min | 1.56% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,266 | 67.2% | 76 min | 2.21% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 369 | 65.1% | 65 min | 3.79% | C− |
Delta leads Frontier by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am49 flights69.6%
- 11am–2pm17 flights—
- 2pm–5pm93 flights72.8%
- 5pm–8pm76 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am122 flights57.5%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.5% on time, against 72.8% for the 2pm–5pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 122 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to ATL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025122 flights56.7%
- Jan–Mar 2026167 flights68.4%
- Apr–Jun 202655 flights70.9%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 65.1% on time across 369 flights.
Spirit on MCO to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 70.9% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 56.7%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 123 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 77.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 46.8%, a spread of 30 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on MCO to ATL runs when it is late
The 124 late arrivals split 47 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 44 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early80 flights22.5%
- Within 15 min151 flights42.5%
- 15–29 min late47 flights13.2%
- 30–59 min late33 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late21 flights5.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 108 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 10 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 26 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ATL.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on MCO to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 November 2025, 5 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across November, September, October and December, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 November 2025 | 5 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 19 September 2025 | 4 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 October 2025 | 4 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 December 2025 | 3 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 October 2025 | 3 hours 45 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 8,097 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,390 of the 8,097 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,097 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 2,670 minutes out of 8,097, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.79%, against 1.89% 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
12.4% 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 404 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 73.5% on time across 368 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 369 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 MCO to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.79% 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. 355 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to ATL, every carrier
- Spirit on ATL to MCO, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to ATL78.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to ATL69.9%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to ATL67.2%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.