Carrier route record
NKSDF→MCO
Spirit Airlines · Louisville to Orlando
- 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 SDF to MCO earns an A−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 116 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's SDF to MCO record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 90 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 112 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.9%
Every carrier on SDF to MCO, 868 flights
These figures cover 116 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 SDF to MCO
Spirit flew 116 of the 868 flights on SDF to MCO, about 13% of it. Its 86.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 86.6% to Republic at 75.0%. 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 | 86.6% | 74 min | 3.45% | A− |
| Southwest Airlines | 724 | 80.2% | 58 min | 1.66% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 28 | 75.0% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 15 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–8am17 flights—
- 8am–11am31 flights96.8%
- 11am–2pm36 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm16 flights—
- 5pm–8pm11 flights—
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 81.8% on time against 96.8% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 36 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on SDF to MCO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202553 flights88.7%
- Oct–Dec 202521 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202635 flights87.1%
- Apr–Jun 20267 flights—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. 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 86.6% on time across 116 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on SDF to MCO 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 86.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 1,114 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
50% 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 1,114 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 1,114 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 457 minutes out of 1,114, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.45%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 81.4% on time across 116 flights, 5 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 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 SDF to MCO
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.45% 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. 112 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.