Carrier route record
NKMCO→PHL
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 579
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- 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 PHL draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 579 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,582 at 75.3% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.3% on time across 2,582 flights.
Key figures
On time
65.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 548 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on MCO to PHL, 5,332 flights
These figures cover 579 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 PHL
Spirit flew 579 of the 5,332 flights on MCO to PHL, about 11% of it. Its 65.0% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.3% to Spirit at 65.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 643 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,582 | 75.3% | 93 min | 2.17% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,528 | 71.4% | 91 min | 1.90% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 643 | 68.1% | 58 min | 0.78% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 579 | 65.0% | 71 min | 5.35% | C− |
American leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 35 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am55 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am104 flights79.8%
- 11am–2pm30 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm77 flights52.2%
- 5pm–8pm109 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am204 flights52.9%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.0% of the time, against 52.2% for the afternoon window. That is 35 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 204 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to PHL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 88.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.3%. 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 35%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 4,872 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,717 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 4,854 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.35%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 15.7% 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 862 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 73.0% on time across 583 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 579 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 PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.35% 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. 548 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to PHL, every carrier
- Spirit on PHL to MCO, the return leg
- American Airlines on MCO to PHL75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to PHL71.4%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to PHL68.1%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- 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.