Route reliability record
DTW→MSY
Detroit to New Orleans
- Flights
- 828
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 926 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 828 DTW to MSY flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to MSY: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Saturday flights 93.1%, against 84.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 818 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
85.0% on time across 628 flights
These figures cover 828 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Which airline is most reliable on DTW 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 | 23 | 95.7% | 86 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 628 | 85.0% | 52 min | 1.43% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 177 | 83.0% | 69 min | 0.56% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW 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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 828 flights.
- 5am–8am27 flights—
- 8am–11am367 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm82 flights91.4%
- 2pm–5pm316 flights84.6%
- 5pm–8pm15 flights—
- 8pm–5am21 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.4% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 84.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 367 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
January is the weak month at 69.7% on time, against 93.1% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.4%. 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. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 6,987 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 3,479 of the 6,987 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,987 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 926 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 runs 83.7% on time across 827 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 828 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 828 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 84.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 818 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to MSY questions
How often is DTW to MSY delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.2% of the 828 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DTW to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
84.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to MSY?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 84.5%, 7 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 January delays on DTW to MSY?
January is the weakest month at 69.7% on time, compared with 93.1% in May. Across the year that is 23 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 DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to MSY85.0%
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to MSY83.0%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record95.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record83.0%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
Direction matters. DTW to MSY and MSY to DTW 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.