Carrier route record
NKMCO→BNA
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Nashville
- Flights
- 714
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- 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 BNA 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 a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 714 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MCO to BNA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 680 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.4%
Every carrier on MCO to BNA, 3,469 flights
These figures cover 714 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 BNA
Spirit flew 714 of the 3,469 flights on MCO to BNA, about 21% of it. Its 72.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 77.9% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 136 | 77.9% | 81 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 29 | 75.0% | 67 min | 3.45% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,590 | 74.8% | 53 min | 1.24% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 714 | 72.2% | 69 min | 4.76% | 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 27 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–8am70 flights88.1%
- 8am–11am94 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm98 flights83.5%
- 2pm–5pm108 flights67.3%
- 5pm–8pm220 flights66.8%
- 8pm–5am124 flights61.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.3% on time, against 88.1% for the 5am–8am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 220 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to BNA through the year
August is the worst month at 61.5% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 83.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 62.5%. 23 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.
- 37%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 4,258 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,006 reported delay minutes.
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 4,828 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.76%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 10.6% 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 616 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 78.2% on time across 713 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 714 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 BNA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.76% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 680 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to BNA, every carrier
- Spirit on BNA to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to BNA77.9%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to BNA74.8%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) 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.