Carrier route record
DLATL→MSY
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to New Orleans
- Flights
- 3,275
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 81%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ATL to MSY lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,275 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to MSY record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,223 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on ATL to MSY, 4,052 flights
These figures cover 3,275 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Delta against every carrier on ATL to MSY
Delta flew 3,275 of the 4,052 flights on ATL to MSY, most of the route. Its 83.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Frontier at 63.6%. Four 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 3,275 | 83.2% | 58 min | 1.53% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 363 | 78.1% | 46 min | 0.28% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 180 | 76.6% | 76 min | 2.78% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 231 | 63.6% | 74 min | 1.30% | D |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on ATL to MSY
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 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–8am195 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am564 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm668 flights86.1%
- 2pm–5pm575 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm686 flights73.8%
- 8pm–5am587 flights79.6%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.6% of the time, against 73.8% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 686 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to MSY through the year
July is the worst month at 71.8% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 88.4%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 307 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.7%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 31,000 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 15,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 31,111 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 425 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.3% on time across 3,278 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,275 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on ATL to MSY
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 88.4% on time and July 71.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,223 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MSY, every carrier
- Delta on MSY to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to MSY78.1%
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to MSY76.6%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to MSY63.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.