Carrier route record
NKMCO→IAH
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Houston
- Flights
- 662
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- 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 IAH sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 662 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,472 at 84.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MCO to IAH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 645 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.0%
Every carrier on MCO to IAH, 3,670 flights
These figures cover 662 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 IAH
Spirit flew 662 of the 3,670 flights on MCO to IAH, about 18% of it. Its 74.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.1% to Spirit at 74.3%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,472 | 84.1% | 89 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 536 | 82.2% | 74 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 662 | 74.3% | 71 min | 2.57% | C |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 84.1%, 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 28 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am100 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am165 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm49 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm143 flights65.5%
- 8pm–5am186 flights63.5%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.5% on time, against 91.8% 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 186 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to IAH through the year
July is the worst month at 52.6% on time, 42 points below September, the best at 94.9%. 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 79 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.8%. 17 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 4,347 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,740 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.57%, 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. 10.2% 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 854 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 75.5% on time across 662 flights, within about 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. 662 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 IAH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 662 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 74.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 645 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to IAH, every carrier
- Spirit on IAH to MCO, the return leg
- United Airlines on MCO to IAH84.1%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to IAH82.2%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.