Carrier route record
WNAUS→MSY
Southwest Airlines · Austin to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,526
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 75%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,526 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,517 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on AUS to MSY, 2,025 flights
These figures cover 1,526 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on AUS to MSY
Southwest flew 1,526 of the 2,025 flights on AUS to MSY, most of the route. Its 75.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.7%. 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 | 495 | 79.3% | 78 min | 0.20% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,526 | 75.8% | 52 min | 0.46% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 37 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 33 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–8am181 flights95.5%
- 8am–11am259 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm220 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm337 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm270 flights62.8%
- 8pm–5am259 flights68.2%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.8% on time, against 95.5% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 337 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, 28 points below August, the best at 88.2%. 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 82.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.6%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 19,000 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.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 19,245 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 95.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.46%, 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
6.6% 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 roughly 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 77.5% on time across 1,541 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 1,526 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. August runs 88.2% on time and June 60.3%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,517 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 7.04 million flight records
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.