Carrier route record
DLDTW→MSY
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to New Orleans
- Flights
- 621
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to MSY earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 621 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to MSY record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 609 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
86.0%
Every carrier on DTW to MSY, 786 flights
These figures cover 621 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DTW to MSY
Delta flew 621 of the 786 flights on DTW to MSY, most of the route. Its 86.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 95.7% to Spirit at 83.7%. Two 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 | 23 | 95.7% | 86 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 621 | 86.2% | 59 min | 1.93% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 142 | 83.7% | 71 min | 0.70% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to MSY
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 621 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am358 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm263 flights84.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 87.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to MSY through the year
January is the weak month at 70.8% on time, against 94.6% in February. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.7%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DTW to MSY runs when it is late
Delta on DTW to MSY often beats the schedule: 203 of 609 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 84 late arrivals split 30 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 26 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early203 flights33.3%
- Within 15 min322 flights52.9%
- 15–29 min late30 flights4.9%
- 30–59 min late28 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late10 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 609 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
21 of 71 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 30% of them. In the other direction, 34 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at MSY.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DTW to MSY
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 July 2026, 5 hours 56 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 July 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 March 2026 | 3 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 December 2025 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 September 2025 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 3 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 4,955 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,846 of the 4,955 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,955 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg runs 84.1% on time across 621 flights, within 2 points 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. 621 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 Delta on DTW to MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 621 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 86.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 609 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to MSY, every carrier
- Delta on MSY to DTW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to MSY83.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.