Carrier route record

NKDTW→MSY

Spirit Airlines · Detroit to New Orleans

Flights: 177
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on DTW to MSY lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 177 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's DTW to MSY record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 176 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.8%

Every carrier on DTW to MSY, 828 flights

These figures cover 177 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

Spirit against every carrier on DTW to MSY

Spirit flew 177 of the 828 flights on DTW to MSY, about 21% of it. Its 83.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.8%. 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 83.0%. 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	628	85.0%	52 min	1.43%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	177	83.0%	69 min	0.56%	B+

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 12 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–8am23 flights—
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm70 flights89.9%
2pm–5pm50 flights78.0%
5pm–8pm12 flights—
8pm–5am21 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 89.9% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 78.0%. 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 70 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DTW to MSY through the year

Jul–Sep 202557 flights80.7%
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 83.0% on time across 177 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on DTW to MSY held fairly steady: 80.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.2% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 78.4% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.5%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 2,080 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
31%

35% 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 2,080 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 2,080 reported delay minutes.

33% 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 692 minutes out of 2,080, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.4% on time across 176 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. 177 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. 177 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 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 176 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