Route reliability record
FLL→MSY
Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,403
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 673 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,403 FLL to MSY flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 488 at 69.9% on time.
Best time to fly FLL to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.7%, against 62.8% for the route overall.
Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 69.9% on time across 488 flights.
Key figures
On time
62.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,372 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Spirit
69.9% on time across 488 flights
These figures cover 1,403 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to MSY
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 69.9% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 54.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 550 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 488 | 69.9% | 62 min | 4.10% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 66.8% | 47 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 550 | 54.0% | 70 min | 1.82% | F |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on FLL 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → MSYMiami to New Orleans | American Airlines | 73.3% | 74.1% | 1.08% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | Spirit Airlines | 67.0% | 69.9% | 4.10% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 66.8% | 66.8% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 4. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | JetBlue Airways | 53.0% | 54.0% | 1.82% | 11am–2pm, Wed | B6 2823 20:10 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am197 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am63 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm241 flights71.0%
- 2pm–5pm290 flights50.9%
- 5pm–8pm131 flights56.2%
- 8pm–5am481 flights56.0%
Scale runs 40% to 90%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.1% of the time, against 50.9% for the afternoon window. That is 34 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 481 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FLL to MSY by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On FLL to MSY, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 50.9%, a wide gap of 34.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.1%
- 8–11am81.0%
- 11am–2pm71.0%
- 2–5pm50.9%
- 5–8pm56.2%
- 8pm–5am56.0%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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.
July is the worst month at 41.5% on time, 42 points below October, the best at 83.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.7%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 to one. The split is drawn from 31,777 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.14% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 673 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 73.1% on time across 1,406 flights, 10 points above 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,403 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 83.0% on time and July 41.5%, a swing of 42 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,372 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to MSY questions
How often is FLL to MSY delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 37.2% of the 1,403 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to MSY?
Spirit Airlines leads at 69.9% on time across 488 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 54.0%, a gap of 16 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FLL to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 50.9%, 34 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 July delays on FLL to MSY?
July is the weakest month at 41.5% on time, compared with 83.0% in October. Across the year that is 42 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 FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to MSY69.9%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to MSY66.8%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to MSY54.0%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.0%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- FLL to LGA, a related route64.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record69.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record66.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record54.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. FLL to MSY and MSY to FLL 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.