Route reliability record
HOU→MSY
Houston to New Orleans
- Flights
- 2,277
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 303 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,277 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,271 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.4% on time across 2,277 flights
These figures cover 2,277 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to MSY
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,277 | 83.4% | 50 min | 0.18% | B+ |
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 23 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–8am245 flights98.0%
- 8am–11am518 flights92.9%
- 11am–2pm333 flights83.5%
- 2pm–5pm361 flights76.6%
- 5pm–8pm337 flights76.6%
- 8pm–5am483 flights75.4%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 98.0% of the time, against 75.4% for the overnight window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 518 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 19,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 18,757 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 98.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.18%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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.
At 303 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.3% on time across 2,277 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,277 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.5% on time and March 71.1%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,271 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to MSY questions
How often is HOU to MSY delayed?
About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.6% of the 2,277 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
83.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 98.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 75.4%, 23 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 March delays on HOU to MSY?
March is the weakest month at 71.1% on time, compared with 91.5% in September. Across the year that is 20 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 HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. HOU to MSY and MSY to HOU are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.