Carrier route record

NKDTW→MSY

Spirit Airlines · Detroit to New Orleans

Flights: 142
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on DTW to MSY lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 142 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's DTW to MSY record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 141 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.70%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

86.0%

Every carrier on DTW to MSY, 786 flights

These figures cover 142 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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

Spirit against every carrier on DTW to MSY

Spirit flew 142 of the 786 flights on DTW to MSY, about 18% of it. Its 83.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 95.7% to Spirit at 83.7%. One 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	621	86.2%	59 min	1.93%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	142	83.7%	71 min	0.70%	B+

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Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am23 flights—
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm68 flights89.6%
2pm–5pm44 flights79.5%
5pm–8pm5 flights—
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 70% 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 89.6% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 79.5%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 68 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DTW to MSY through the year

Jul–Sep 202522 flights—
Oct–Dec 202568 flights88.2%
Jan–Mar 202652 flights78.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.7% on time across 142 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on DTW to MSY logged 22 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 68 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 52 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late Spirit on DTW to MSY runs when it is late

Spirit on DTW to MSY often beats the schedule: 60 of 141 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 23 late arrivals split 5 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.

15+ min early60 flights42.6%
Within 15 min58 flights41.1%
15–29 min late5 flights3.5%
30–59 min late10 flights7.1%
1–2 hours late3 flights2.1%
2+ hours late5 flights3.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 141 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 31 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 12 still arrived on time. 4 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Spirit on DTW to MSY

The latest arrival of the period was on 6 February 2026, 3 hours 42 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in September 2025.

The latest arrivals of Spirit on DTW to MSY in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
6 February 2026	3 hours 42 minutes	Carrier
21 September 2025	2 hours 59 minutes	Carrier
1 December 2025	2 hours 59 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
1 September 2025	2 hours 35 minutes	National Airspace System
25 September 2025	2 hours	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,641 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
29%

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 570 of the 1,641 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,641 reported delay minutes.

36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 597 minutes out of 1,641, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.1% on time across 141 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 142 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 Spirit on DTW to MSY

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 142 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 141 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures