Route reliability record
LAS→MSY
Las Vegas to New Orleans
- Flights
- 838
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,500 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 838 LAS to MSY flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly LAS to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.5%, against 73.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
73.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 833 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.4% on time across 717 flights
These figures cover 838 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAS 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 99 | 78.4% | 71 min | 2.02% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 717 | 73.4% | 47 min | 0.28% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 22 | 72.7% | 67 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 25 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–8am113 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am241 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm18 flights—
- 2pm–5pm112 flights64.0%
- 5pm–8pm317 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am37 flights66.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.3% of the time, against 64.0% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 317 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 59.6%. August is the strongest month at 85.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. October was the busiest month here, with 103 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.5%. 19 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 48% of the 11,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
48% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 10,858 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 3,884 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, 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
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,500 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.3% on time across 839 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 838 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 838 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 73.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 833 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to MSY questions
How often is LAS to MSY delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.1% of the 838 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is LAS to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
73.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAS to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 64.0%, 25 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 LAS to MSY?
March is the weakest month at 59.6% on time, compared with 85.3% in August. Across the year that is 26 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 LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- LAS to LAX, a related route78.8%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- LAS to DEN, a related route77.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record78.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.7%
- 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. LAS to MSY and MSY to LAS 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.