Route reliability record
DFW→MSY
Dallas-Fort Worth to New Orleans
- Flights
- 2,815
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 448 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,815 DFW to MSY flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DFW to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.7%, against 69.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,737 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
67.7% on time across 2,362 flights
These figures cover 2,815 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 193 | 80.3% | 44 min | 1.55% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 77.3% | 87 min | 1.12% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 156 | 73.6% | 78 min | 5.13% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,362 | 67.7% | 78 min | 2.62% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 15 | 60.0% | 81 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to MSY
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to New Orleans
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAL → MSYDallas to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 74.7% | 75.6% | 1.14% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → MSYDallas-Fort Worth to New Orleans | American Airlines | 65.9% | 67.7% | 2.62% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1455 20:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am293 flights82.3%
- 8am–11am653 flights80.7%
- 11am–2pm495 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm443 flights59.4%
- 5pm–8pm373 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am558 flights58.7%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 82.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 653 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to MSY by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DFW to MSY, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 82.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 55.6%, a wide gap of 26.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am82.3%
- 8–11am80.7%
- 11am–2pm76.8%
- 2–5pm59.4%
- 5–8pm55.6%
- 8pm–5am58.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 56.6% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 81.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 258 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.9%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 65,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 65,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 64,915 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 82.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.63%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 448 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.1% on time across 2,816 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,815 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. February runs 81.3% on time and July 56.6%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,737 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to MSY questions
How often is DFW to MSY delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.8% of the 2,815 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
69.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 82.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.6%, 27 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 DFW to MSY?
July is the weakest month at 56.6% on time, compared with 81.3% in February. Across the year that is 25 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to MSY80.3%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to MSY73.6%
- American Airlines on DFW to MSY67.7%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.3%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record73.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to MSY and MSY to DFW 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.