Carrier route record

DLDTW→MSY

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to New Orleans

Flights: 628
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 76%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 628 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to MSY record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 619 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.8%

Every carrier on DTW to MSY, 828 flights

These figures cover 628 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

Delta against every carrier on DTW to MSY

Delta flew 628 of the 828 flights on DTW to MSY, most of the route. Its 85.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.8%. 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 83.0%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to MSY
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	23	95.7%	86 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	628	85.0%	52 min	1.43%	A
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	177	83.0%	69 min	0.56%	B+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on DTW to MSY

DL 279008:4584.3% · 362 flights

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 628 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am362 flights84.3%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm266 flights85.9%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.

Across the year

Delta on DTW to MSY through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, January worst

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 75.8%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 4,821 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.

Carrier
58%
National Airspace System
25%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 2,776 of the 4,821 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,821 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% 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 85.4% on time across 628 flights, within half 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. 628 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. 628 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 85.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 619 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures