Route reliability record
CLT→MSY
Charlotte to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,742
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 650 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, about a point 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,742 CLT to MSY flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.2%, against 78.6% 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
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,717 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
78.2% on time across 1,643 flights
These figures cover 1,742 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to MSY
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 13 | 92.3% | 187 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 85.7% | 79 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 82.1% | 226 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,643 | 78.2% | 77 min | 1.34% | B |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am147 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am351 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm399 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm354 flights71.5%
- 5pm–8pm118 flights63.6%
- 8pm–5am373 flights75.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 91.8% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 399 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
July is the worst month at 65.1% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 88.8%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 169 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.6%. 16 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 54% of the 30,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% 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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 30,171 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 10,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 650 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.7% on time across 1,742 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 1,742 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 88.8% on time and July 65.1%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,717 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to MSY questions
How often is CLT to MSY delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.4% of the 1,742 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CLT to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
78.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.6%, 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 July delays on CLT to MSY?
July is the weakest month at 65.1% on time, compared with 88.8% in September. Across the year that is 24 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 CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record92.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record85.7%
- 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. CLT to MSY and MSY to CLT 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.