Carrier route record

NKRIC→MCO

Spirit Airlines · Richmond to Orlando

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 RIC to MCO earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 202 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on RIC to MCO runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 212 extra late arrivals.

On time

56.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 195 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.48%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.8%

Every carrier on RIC to MCO, 1,202 flights

These figures cover 202 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.5% 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 RIC to MCO

Spirit flew 202 of the 1,202 flights on RIC to MCO, about 17% of it. Its 56.4% on time is 15 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.5% to Spirit at 56.4%. 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 RIC to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	320	76.5%	60 min	0.94%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	4	75.0%	19 min	0.00%	B+
JetBlue Airways	676	74.2%	82 min	2.37%	C
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	202	56.4%	85 min	2.48%	D

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 202 flights.

5am–8am22 flights—
8am–11am8 flights—
11am–2pm54 flights52.9%
2pm–5pm15 flights—
5pm–8pm15 flights—
8pm–5am88 flights50.6%

Scale runs 40% to 60%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 52.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.

Across the year

Spirit on RIC to MCO through the year

Jul–Sep 202566 flights63.1%
Oct–Dec 202558 flights60.3%
Jan–Mar 202664 flights44.8%
Apr–Jun 202614 flights—

Scale runs 35% to 70%. 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 56.4% on time across 202 flights.

Spirit on RIC to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 63.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 44.8%, a swing of 18 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 62.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 45.5%. 17 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 7,210 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
National Airspace System
29%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
1%

47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 7,210 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 7,210 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.99%.

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. 20.5% 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 61.3% on time across 202 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. 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 RIC to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 202 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 56.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 195 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