Carrier route record

NKMCO→MKE

Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Milwaukee

Flights: 117
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
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 MKE lands a B−, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 117 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MCO to MKE from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 113 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.42%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.9%

Every carrier on MCO to MKE, 1,408 flights

These figures cover 117 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 MKE

Spirit flew 117 of the 1,408 flights on MCO to MKE, about 8% of it. Its 76.1% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.8% to Southwest at 68.9%. One 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 MKE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	162	81.8%	58 min	1.85%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	117	76.1%	82 min	3.42%	B−
Southwest Airlines	1,129	68.9%	51 min	0.89%	C+

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 117 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's MCO to MKE record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 76.1% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Spirit on MCO to MKE through the year

Jul–Sep 202571 flights67.6%
Oct–Dec 202539 flights88.9%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. 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 76.1% on time across 117 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on MCO to MKE logged 71 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 39 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 76.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 2,215 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
3%

46% 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 2,215 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 2,215 reported delay minutes.

33% 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 725 minutes out of 2,215, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.42%, 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 1,066 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 75.9% on time across 117 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. 117 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 MKE

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.42% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 113 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