Carrier route record
NKPHL→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Philadelphia to Orlando
- Flights
- 583
- 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 PHL to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 583 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,581 at 73.6% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.6% on time across 2,581 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 549 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.4%
Every carrier on PHL to MCO, 5,334 flights
These figures cover 583 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 PHL to MCO
Spirit flew 583 of the 5,334 flights on PHL to MCO, about 11% of it. Its 73.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 73.6% to Frontier at 70.2%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,581 | 73.6% | 77 min | 1.98% | C |
| Spirit Airlines (this page) | 583 | 73.0% | 67 min | 5.83% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 641 | 72.3% | 59 min | 0.94% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,529 | 70.2% | 107 min | 2.16% | C |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 73.6%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 50 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am281 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm17 flights—
- 2pm–5pm77 flights68.8%
- 5pm–8pm121 flights40.2%
- 8pm–5am87 flights65.1%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 40.2% on time, against 90.6% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 281 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on PHL to MCO through the year
August is the worst month at 59.8% on time, 29 points below November, the best at 88.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. August was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.2%. 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 42% of the 9,967 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.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 4,205 minutes out of 9,967, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,967 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.83%, 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. 10.0% 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 65.0% on time across 579 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 583 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 PHL to MCO
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.83% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 549 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to MCO, every carrier
- Spirit on MCO to PHL, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHL to MCO73.6%
- Southwest Airlines on PHL to MCO72.3%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to MCO70.2%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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.