Carrier route record
NKMCO→AUS
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Austin
- Flights
- 189
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MCO to AUS sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 189 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 547 at 81.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MCO to AUS runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 183 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on MCO to AUS, 2,792 flights
These figures cover 189 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 MCO to AUS
Spirit flew 189 of the 2,792 flights on MCO to AUS, about 7% of it. Its 72.1% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.0% to Spirit at 72.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 171 | 82.0% | 49 min | 2.34% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 547 | 81.1% | 115 min | 1.46% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,885 | 75.4% | 60 min | 0.74% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 189 | 72.1% | 86 min | 3.17% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.1%, 6 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 189 flights.
- 5am–8am28 flights—
- 8am–11am12 flights—
- 11am–2pm10 flights—
- 2pm–5pm80 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm39 flights63.2%
- 8pm–5am20 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 67.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to AUS through the year
- Jul–Sep 202520 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202568 flights85.3%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights67.9%
- Apr–Jun 202612 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 72.1% on time across 189 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on MCO to AUS logged 20 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 68 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 89 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 12 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 72.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.0%. 17 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 46% of the 4,398 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.
- 46%National Airspace System
- 42%Carrier
- 7%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 1,854 of the 4,398 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,398 reported delay minutes.
46% 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 2,032 minutes out of 4,398, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.17%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 12.6% 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 994 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 62.9% on time across 189 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. 189 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 AUS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 183 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to AUS, every carrier
- Spirit on AUS to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to AUS82.0%
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to AUS81.1%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to AUS75.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.