Carrier route record
WNDCA→MSY
Southwest Airlines · Washington to New Orleans
- Flights
- 706
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 36%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DCA to MSY sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 706 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 457 at 73.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DCA to MSY runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 691 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.7%
Every carrier on DCA to MSY, 1,951 flights
These figures cover 706 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 DCA to MSY
Southwest flew 706 of the 1,951 flights on DCA to MSY, about 36% of it. Its 72.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.0% to PSA at 72.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 230 | 83.0% | 37 min | 0.43% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 457 | 73.5% | 82 min | 3.06% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 706 | 72.1% | 58 min | 1.84% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 558 | 72.0% | 72 min | 4.48% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 21 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am29 flights—
- 8am–11am7 flights—
- 11am–2pm319 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm35 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm159 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am157 flights65.8%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.6% on time, against 79.6% for the 11am–2pm 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 319 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DCA to MSY through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 52.5%. December is the strongest month at 82.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 30 points. March was the busiest month here, with 67 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.8%. 17 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 64% of the 11,000 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.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
64% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 11,126 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.9% 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.
The 969 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 68.2% on time across 706 flights, 4 points below 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 706 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 Southwest on DCA to MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 706 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 72.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 691 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to MSY, every carrier
- Southwest on MSY to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to MSY83.0%
- American Airlines on DCA to MSY73.5%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to MSY72.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.