Route reliability record
AUS→MSY
Austin to New Orleans
- Flights
- 2,025
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 445 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 2,025 AUS to MSY flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 495 at 79.3% on time.
Best time to fly AUS to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Saturday flights 81.2%, against 76.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,013 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.3% on time across 495 flights
These figures cover 2,025 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to MSY
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 495 | 79.3% | 78 min | 0.20% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,526 | 75.8% | 52 min | 0.46% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 37 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 79.3%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on AUS to MSY
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin to New Orleans
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AUS → MSYAustin to New Orleans | SkyWest Airlines | 79.1% | 79.3% | 0.20% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4016 13:55 |
| 2. AUS → MSYAustin to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 75.5% | 75.8% | 0.46% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am312 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am259 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm278 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm538 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm379 flights67.2%
- 8pm–5am259 flights68.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 66.5% for the afternoon window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 538 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 61.4% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 87.0%. 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 198 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.8%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 27,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 27,190 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 9,718 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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 445 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 runs 78.2% on time across 2,040 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,025 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.0% on time and June 61.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,013 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to MSY questions
How often is AUS to MSY delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.3% of the 2,025 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to MSY?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 79.3% on time across 495 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.8%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AUS to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 66.5%, 28 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on AUS to MSY?
June is the weakest month at 61.4% on time, compared with 87.0% in September. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on AUS to MSY79.3%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to MSY75.8%
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.4%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- AUS to DFW, a related route73.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. AUS to MSY and MSY to AUS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.