Carrier route record

NKMCO→RIC

Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Richmond

Flights: 202
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
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 RIC draws a D−. Roughly 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 202 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MCO to RIC runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 163 extra late arrivals.

On time

61.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 191 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.46%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.7%

Every carrier on MCO to RIC, 1,202 flights

These figures cover 202 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 RIC

Spirit flew 202 of the 1,202 flights on MCO to RIC, about 17% of it. Its 61.3% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Southwest at 60.3%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to RIC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	4	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
JetBlue Airways	676	74.7%	69 min	1.78%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	202	61.3%	71 min	4.46%	D−
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	320	60.3%	60 min	0.94%	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 34 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–8am4 flights—
8am–11am62 flights71.2%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm44 flights58.5%
5pm–8pm59 flights42.6%
8pm–5am30 flights76.7%

Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.6% on time, against 76.7% for the 8pm–5am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 62 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MCO to RIC through the year

Jul–Sep 202567 flights66.7%
Oct–Dec 202557 flights69.1%
Jan–Mar 202664 flights51.8%
Apr–Jun 202614 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 75%. 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 61.3% on time across 202 flights.

Spirit on MCO to RIC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 69.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 51.8%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 67 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 69.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 5,223 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.

National Airspace System
44%
Carrier
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 1,994 of the 5,223 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,223 reported delay minutes.

44% 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 2,286 minutes out of 5,223, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 4.46%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 13.6% 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 667 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 56.4% on time across 202 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 202 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 RIC

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.46% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 191 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