Carrier route record

NKMCO→CMH

Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Columbus

Flights: 387
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
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 CMH draws a D. Roughly 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 387 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MCO to CMH runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 158 extra late arrivals.

On time

61.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 377 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.58%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.6%

Every carrier on MCO to CMH, 2,171 flights

These figures cover 387 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% 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 CMH

Spirit flew 387 of the 2,171 flights on MCO to CMH, about 18% of it. Its 61.8% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 78.2% to Republic at 53.6%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to CMH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	229	78.2%	71 min	1.75%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,527	73.4%	58 min	1.18%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)	387	61.8%	63 min	2.58%	D
Republic Airwaysthin sample	28	53.6%	68 min	0.00%	F+

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 42 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–8am—
8am–11am59 flights81.4%
11am–2pm46 flights76.1%
2pm–5pm52 flights63.5%
5pm–8pm101 flights70.0%
8pm–5am129 flights39.2%

Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 39.2% on time, against 81.4% for the 8am–11am 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 129 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MCO to CMH through the year

Jul–Sep 2025153 flights69.9%
Oct–Dec 2025113 flights68.1%
Jan–Mar 202693 flights44.2%
Apr–Jun 202628 flights—

Scale runs 35% 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 61.8% on time across 387 flights.

Spirit on MCO to CMH did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 44.2%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 129 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 49.1%. 30 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 9,116 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
4%

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 3,137 of the 9,116 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,116 reported delay minutes.

35% 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 3,158 minutes out of 9,116, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 2.58%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 15.9% 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.

The 802 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 72.2% on time across 387 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 387 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 CMH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 387 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 61.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 377 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures