Route reliability record
LAX→MSY
Los Angeles to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,431
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,671 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,431 LAX to MSY flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAX to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.2%, against 78.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,419 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
81.5% on time across 949 flights
These figures cover 1,431 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 LAX 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 949 | 81.5% | 69 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 126 | 74.6% | 118 min | 3.17% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 356 | 69.9% | 44 min | 0.28% | C+ |
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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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am391 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am285 flights74.4%
- 11am–2pm334 flights66.1%
- 2pm–5pm91 flights90.1%
- 5pm–8pm283 flights71.3%
- 8pm–5am47 flights86.7%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 66.1% on time against 91.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 391 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX 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 LAX to MSY, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.8% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 66.1%, a wide gap of 25.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.8%
- 8–11am74.4%
- 11am–2pm66.1%
- 2–5pm90.1%
- 5–8pm71.3%
- 8pm–5am86.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 67.3%. August is the strongest month at 89.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. October was the busiest month here, with 176 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.6%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 10,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,290 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 91.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
7.3% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,671 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 runs 78.3% on time across 1,428 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,431 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. August runs 89.9% on time and March 67.3%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,419 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to MSY questions
How often is LAX to MSY delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.0% of the 1,431 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LAX to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
78.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 66.1%, 26 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 LAX to MSY?
March is the weakest month at 67.3% on time, compared with 89.9% in August. Across the year that is 23 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 LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to MSY81.5%
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to MSY74.6%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to MSY69.9%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record74.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.9%
- 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. LAX to MSY and MSY to LAX 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.