Carrier route record
NKMCO→SDF
Spirit Airlines · Orlando to Louisville
- Flights
- 116
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- 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 SDF lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 116 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MCO to SDF from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 113 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on MCO to SDF, 868 flights
These figures cover 116 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on MCO to SDF
Spirit flew 116 of the 868 flights on MCO to SDF, about 13% of it. Its 81.4% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 81.4% to Republic at 71.4%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 116 | 81.4% | 53 min | 2.59% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 724 | 73.2% | 59 min | 2.07% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 28 | 71.4% | 38 min | 0.00% | 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 116 flights.
- 5am–8am31 flights96.8%
- 8am–11am51 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm14 flights—
- 5pm–8pm5 flights—
- 8pm–5am14 flights—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.8% of the time, against 87.5% for the morning window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 51 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MCO to SDF through the year
- Jul–Sep 202553 flights81.1%
- Oct–Dec 202521 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202635 flights84.4%
- Apr–Jun 20267 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 81.4% on time across 116 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on MCO to SDF logged 53 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 21 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 35 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 7 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 81.4% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 59% of the 1,118 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.
- 59%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, 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 659 of the 1,118 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,118 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.59%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 719 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 86.6% on time across 116 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 116 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 SDF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 116 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 81.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 113 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.