Carrier route record

NKMCO→SAT

Spirit Airlines · Orlando to San Antonio

Flights: 253
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
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 SAT 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 253 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

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

On time

74.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 238 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.93%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.2%

Every carrier on MCO to SAT, 1,114 flights

These figures cover 253 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 SAT

Spirit flew 253 of the 1,114 flights on MCO to SAT, about 23% of it. Its 74.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 78.8% to Southwest at 73.5%. 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 SAT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	99	78.8%	104 min	0.00%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	253	74.4%	69 min	5.93%	C−
Southwest Airlines	762	73.5%	57 min	0.26%	C+

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 27 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–8am7 flights—
8am–11am72 flights85.9%
11am–2pm37 flights70.3%
2pm–5pm31 flights77.4%
5pm–8pm44 flights59.1%
8pm–5am62 flights70.9%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 85.9% for the 8am–11am 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 72 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MCO to SAT through the year

Jul–Sep 202563 flights77.8%
Oct–Dec 202573 flights72.2%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights73.7%
Apr–Jun 202628 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 74.4% on time across 253 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on MCO to SAT held fairly steady: 77.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 72.2% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 73.7% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.0%. 18 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 4,223 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 1,767 of the 4,223 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,223 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.9% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.93%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 10.1% 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 1,041 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 77.5% on time across 254 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 253 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 SAT

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.93% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 238 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