Carrier route record
NKORD→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Chicago to Orlando
- Flights
- 582
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on ORD to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 582 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,459 at 78.7% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.7% on time across 2,459 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 563 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on ORD to MCO, 6,347 flights
These figures cover 582 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 ORD to MCO
Spirit flew 582 of the 6,347 flights on ORD to MCO, about 9% of it. Its 71.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.7% to American at 64.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,140 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,459 | 78.7% | 70 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 801 | 73.9% | 66 min | 1.12% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 582 | 71.6% | 80 min | 3.09% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 365 | 69.5% | 97 min | 2.19% | C |
| American Airlines | 2,140 | 64.5% | 79 min | 2.29% | D |
The spread between United and American is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 44 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am158 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am161 flights71.2%
- 11am–2pm138 flights66.4%
- 2pm–5pm37 flights37.8%
- 5pm–8pm80 flights78.5%
- 8pm–5am8 flights—
Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.6% of the time, against 37.8% for the afternoon window. That is 44 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 161 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on ORD to MCO through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. September was the busiest month here, with 67 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.6%. 22 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,794 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 4,287 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.09%, 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. 12.3% 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 1,005 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 60.0% on time across 583 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 582 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 ORD to MCO
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.09% 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. 563 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MCO, every carrier
- Spirit on MCO to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to MCO78.7%
- Southwest Airlines on ORD to MCO73.9%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to MCO69.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to MCO64.5%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.