Carrier route record
NKMCO→IND
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 424
- 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 IND sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 424 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MCO to IND from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 413 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on MCO to IND, 2,404 flights
These figures cover 424 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 IND
Spirit flew 424 of the 2,404 flights on MCO to IND, about 18% of it. Its 75.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.1% to Republic at 55.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 335 | 82.1% | 101 min | 1.19% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 424 | 75.3% | 72 min | 2.36% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,617 | 72.6% | 58 min | 1.36% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 28 | 55.6% | 61 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am144 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am37 flights70.3%
- 11am–2pm62 flights59.0%
- 2pm–5pm20 flights—
- 5pm–8pm46 flights82.6%
- 8pm–5am115 flights64.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 59.0% on time against 89.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 144 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to IND through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 50.0%. February is the strongest month at 86.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 36 points. October was the busiest month here, with 70 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.1%. 20 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 7,387 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 89.4% on time here. The split is drawn from 7,387 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. carrier at 33%, national airspace system at 32% and late-arriving aircraft at 31% split the 7,387 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations sit at 2.36% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
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. 10.4% 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 829 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 84.7% on time across 421 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 424 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 IND
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 424 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 75.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 413 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to IND, every carrier
- Spirit on IND to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to IND82.1%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to IND72.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.