Route reliability record
HOU→MSY
Houston to New Orleans
- Flights
- 2,289
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 303 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 5 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 about 50 minutes on average. That rests on 2,289 HOU to MSY flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly HOU to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.8%, against 82.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,283 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.22%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.6% on time across 2,289 flights
These figures cover 2,289 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 2,289 | 82.6% | 51 min | 0.22% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston 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 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAH → MSYHouston to New Orleans | United Airlines | 83.8% | 83.9% | 0.11% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 491 07:20 |
| 2. HOU → MSYHouston to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 82.4% | 82.6% | 0.22% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am232 flights97.4%
- 8am–11am531 flights92.8%
- 11am–2pm326 flights86.2%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights77.1%
- 5pm–8pm349 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am491 flights74.4%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.4% of the time, against 70.8% for the evening window. That is 27 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 531 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HOU 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 HOU to MSY, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.8%, a wide gap of 26.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.4%
- 8–11am92.8%
- 11am–2pm86.2%
- 2–5pm77.1%
- 5–8pm70.8%
- 8pm–5am74.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
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 87.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.5%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 20,094 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,222 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.22%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 75.9% on time across 2,276 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 2,289 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. 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. 2,283 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.4% of the 2,289 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
82.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 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 97.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.8%, 27 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
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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.
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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.