Route reliability record
FLL→MSY
Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,398
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 673 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C. About 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 1,398 FLL to MSY flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 604 at 73.6% on time.
Best time to fly FLL to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.7%, against 67.6% for the route overall.
Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.6% on time across 604 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,370 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Spirit
73.6% on time across 604 flights
These figures cover 1,398 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 73.6% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 60.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 426 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 604 | 73.6% | 63 min | 3.31% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 368 | 66.6% | 44 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 426 | 60.0% | 67 min | 1.64% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.3% 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.
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. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | Spirit Airlines | 71.2% | 73.6% | 3.31% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. MIA → MSYMiami to New Orleans | American Airlines | 71.0% | 71.8% | 1.07% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 66.6% | 66.6% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | JetBlue Airways | 59.0% | 60.0% | 1.64% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
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 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am217 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am68 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm242 flights71.2%
- 2pm–5pm221 flights53.9%
- 5pm–8pm207 flights66.2%
- 8pm–5am443 flights60.9%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.4% of the time, against 53.9% 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 443 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
December is the weak month at 51.4% on time, against 83.0% in October. 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 151 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.9%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 26,346 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 9,980 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 75.2% on time across 1,397 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,398 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 December 51.4%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,370 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to MSY questions
How often is FLL to MSY delayed?
About 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 32.4% of the 1,398 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to MSY?
Spirit Airlines leads at 73.6% on time across 604 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 60.0%, a gap of 14 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 87.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 53.9%, 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 December delays on FLL to MSY?
December is the weakest month at 51.4% on time, compared with 83.0% in October. Across the year that is 32 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 MSY73.6%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to MSY66.6%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to MSY60.0%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record73.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record66.6%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record60.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.