Carrier route record
AADFW→MSY
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New Orleans
- Flights
- 2,345
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 84%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to MSY carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,345 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to MSY runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 113 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,267 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on DFW to MSY, 2,798 flights
These figures cover 2,345 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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
American against every carrier on DFW to MSY
American flew 2,345 of the 2,798 flights on DFW to MSY, most of the route. Its 66.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 85.3% to PSA at 57.1%. Four 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 85.3% | 125 min | 2.86% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 211 | 75.9% | 40 min | 2.84% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 72.2% | 75 min | 4.35% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,345 | 66.3% | 76 min | 3.24% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 57.1% | 86 min | 8.70% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to MSY
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 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–8am288 flights80.7%
- 8am–11am474 flights80.9%
- 11am–2pm298 flights75.8%
- 2pm–5pm367 flights53.9%
- 5pm–8pm425 flights51.3%
- 8pm–5am493 flights60.3%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.3% on time, against 80.9% for the 8am–11am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 493 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to MSY through the year
July is the worst month at 42.5% on time, 40 points below February, the best at 82.7%. 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 227 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.9%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 58,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 9%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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 58,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 58,301 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 80.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.24%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.7% on time across 2,346 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,345 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 American on DFW to MSY
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.24% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,267 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to MSY, every carrier
- American on MSY to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to MSY75.9%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to MSY72.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.