Carrier route record
WNAUS→MSY
Southwest Airlines · Austin to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,497
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 77%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on AUS to MSY sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,497 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest 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
75.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,488 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.2%
Every carrier on AUS to MSY, 1,934 flights
These figures cover 1,497 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on AUS to MSY
Southwest flew 1,497 of the 1,934 flights on AUS to MSY, most of the route. Its 75.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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 | 433 | 79.3% | 78 min | 0.23% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,497 | 75.3% | 49 min | 0.40% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 37 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am212 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am251 flights91.2%
- 11am–2pm197 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm339 flights61.7%
- 5pm–8pm265 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am233 flights68.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.7% of the time, against 61.7% for the afternoon window. That is 34 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 339 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on AUS to MSY through the year
June is the worst month at 60.3% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 85.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.9%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on AUS to MSY runs when it is late
The 367 late arrivals split 149 under half an hour, 128 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 90 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early266 flights17.9%
- Within 15 min855 flights57.5%
- 15–29 min late149 flights10.0%
- 30–59 min late128 flights8.6%
- 1–2 hours late62 flights4.2%
- 2+ hours late28 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,488 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
78 of 415 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 30 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on AUS to MSY
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 April 2026, 5 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 April 2026 | 5 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 May 2026 | 4 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 May 2026 | 4 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 June 2026 | 3 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 April 2026 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 18,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 to one. The split is drawn from 18,052 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 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, 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 76.5% on time across 1,539 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,497 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 Southwest on AUS to MSY
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 85.5% on time and June 60.3%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to MSY, every carrier
- Southwest on MSY to AUS, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on AUS to MSY79.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.