Carrier route record
OOAUS→MSY
SkyWest Airlines · Austin to New Orleans
- Flights
- 495
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on AUS to MSY lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 495 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on AUS to MSY from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 492 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on AUS to MSY, 2,025 flights
These figures cover 495 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on AUS to MSY
SkyWest flew 495 of the 2,025 flights on AUS to MSY, about 24% of it. Its 79.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 79.3% to Frontier 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on AUS to MSY
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 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–8am131 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm58 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm200 flights71.9%
- 5pm–8pm106 flights78.3%
- 8pm–5am—
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 93.1% of the time, against 71.9% for the afternoon window. That is 21 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 200 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on AUS to MSY through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 93.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 71.8%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 65% of the 7,908 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.
- 65%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 20% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,908 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 5,163 of the 7,908 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.20%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% 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.
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 80.7% on time across 495 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 495 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 SkyWest on AUS to MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 495 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 79.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 492 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to MSY, every carrier
- SkyWest on MSY to AUS, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to MSY75.8%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.