Carrier route record
DLJFK→MSY
Delta Air Lines · New York to New Orleans
- Flights
- 720
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 63%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on JFK to MSY lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 720 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's JFK to MSY record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 681 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.42%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.4%
Every carrier on JFK to MSY, 1,142 flights
These figures cover 720 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on JFK to MSY
Delta flew 720 of the 1,142 flights on JFK to MSY, most of the route. Its 81.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to Frontier at 28.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 720 | 81.6% | 79 min | 5.42% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 415 | 76.3% | 74 min | 5.30% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 7 | 28.6% | 56 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on JFK to MSY
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 720 flights.
- 5am–8am31 flights—
- 8am–11am333 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm356 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 84.5% on time for the 8am–11am window against 78.8% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on JFK to MSY through the year
July is the worst month at 64.8% on time, 27 points below March, the best at 91.8%. 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 62 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.3%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on JFK to MSY runs when it is late
Delta on JFK to MSY often beats the schedule: 315 of 681 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 125 late arrivals split 39 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 48 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early315 flights46.3%
- Within 15 min241 flights35.4%
- 15–29 min late39 flights5.7%
- 30–59 min late38 flights5.6%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights4.0%
- 2+ hours late21 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 681 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 101 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 43 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at MSY.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on JFK to MSY
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 July 2026, 13 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 July 2026 | 13 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 December 2025 | 7 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 August 2026 | 6 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 May 2026 | 5 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 January 2026 | 5 hours | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 9,881 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,322 of the 9,881 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,881 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.42%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 1,182 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 runs 80.1% on time across 720 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 720 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 Delta on JFK to MSY
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.42% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 681 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to MSY, every carrier
- Delta on MSY to JFK, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to MSY76.3%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.