Route reliability record
LAX→MSY
Los Angeles to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,500
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,671 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,500 LAX to MSY flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAX to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.5%, against 78.8% 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
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,486 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
81.8% on time across 959 flights
These figures cover 1,500 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 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 | 959 | 81.8% | 67 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 180 | 79.5% | 112 min | 2.22% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 361 | 70.5% | 44 min | 0.28% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on LAX to MSY
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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–8am391 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am277 flights79.0%
- 11am–2pm373 flights66.9%
- 2pm–5pm75 flights85.3%
- 5pm–8pm307 flights72.3%
- 8pm–5am77 flights86.7%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 66.9% on time against 92.3% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 89.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 22 points. October was the busiest month here, with 176 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.8%. 16 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. Carrier accounts for 52% of the 20,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 10,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,281 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 92.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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
6.9% 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 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 80.1% on time across 1,499 flights, within about 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 1,500 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 89.6% on time and March 67.3%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,486 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to MSY questions
How often is LAX to MSY delayed?
About 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 21.2% of the 1,500 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LAX to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
78.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about 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 92.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 66.9%, 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 LAX to MSY?
March is the weakest month at 67.3% on time, compared with 89.6% in August. Across the year that is 22 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 MSY81.8%
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to MSY79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to MSY70.5%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.5%
- 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. 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.