Carrier route record
NKMCO→CLT
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Charlotte
- Flights
- 470
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MCO to CLT 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 470 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 590 at 80.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MCO to CLT runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 448 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.4%
Every carrier on MCO to CLT, 4,739 flights
These figures cover 470 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% 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 CLT
Spirit flew 470 of the 4,739 flights on MCO to CLT, about 10% of it. Its 72.3% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.6% to Spirit at 72.3%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 590 | 80.6% | 66 min | 1.19% | B |
| American Airlines | 3,679 | 78.8% | 88 min | 1.60% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 470 | 72.3% | 72 min | 4.47% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 80.6%, 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 30 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am74 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am69 flights71.9%
- 11am–2pm58 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm115 flights70.4%
- 5pm–8pm119 flights63.2%
- 8pm–5am35 flights60.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.0% on time, against 90.4% 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 119 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to CLT through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 68 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.4%. 27 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 8,965 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 3,055 of the 8,965 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,965 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 3,734 minutes out of 8,965, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.47%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 12.9% 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.
At 468 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 70.5% on time across 471 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 470 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 CLT
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.47% 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. 448 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to CLT, every carrier
- Spirit on CLT to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to CLT80.6%
- American Airlines on MCO to CLT78.8%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.