Carrier route record
NKMCO→DFW
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 512
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- 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 DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 512 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 733 at 79.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MCO to DFW runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 492 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.4%
Every carrier on MCO to DFW, 4,911 flights
These figures cover 512 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 DFW
Spirit flew 512 of the 4,911 flights on MCO to DFW, about 10% of it. Its 69.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 79.2% to Spirit at 69.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 79.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 72.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,630 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 733 | 79.2% | 60 min | 1.36% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 36 | 75.0% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 3,630 | 72.8% | 90 min | 3.09% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 512 | 69.5% | 71 min | 3.32% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 40 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am101 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am32 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm74 flights67.6%
- 2pm–5pm68 flights65.6%
- 5pm–8pm77 flights54.8%
- 8pm–5am160 flights58.7%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.8% on time, against 95.0% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 160 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to DFW through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.7%. 19 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 10,683 reported delay minutes.
32% 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 3,464 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.32%, 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. 12.4% 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 985 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 runs 69.1% on time across 513 flights, within half a point 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. 512 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 DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.32% 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. 492 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to DFW, every carrier
- Spirit on DFW to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to DFW79.2%
- American Airlines on MCO to DFW72.8%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.