Carrier route record
DLLAX→MSY
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to New Orleans
- Flights
- 959
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 64%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAX to MSY lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 959 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to MSY record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 42 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 951 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.8%
Every carrier on LAX to MSY, 1,500 flights
These figures cover 959 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Delta against every carrier on LAX to MSY
Delta flew 959 of the 1,500 flights on LAX to MSY, most of the route. Its 81.8% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.8% to Southwest at 70.5%. Two 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) | 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
Delta flight numbers on LAX to MSY
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 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–8am346 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am15 flights—
- 11am–2pm249 flights76.5%
- 2pm–5pm62 flights88.7%
- 5pm–8pm287 flights72.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 72.5% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 346 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAX to MSY through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 70.6%. August is the strongest month at 88.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. October was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.9%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 57% of the 12,000 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.
- 57%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 6,671 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,603 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 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.42%, 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 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 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 84.0% on time across 959 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. 959 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 LAX to MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 959 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 81.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 951 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to MSY, every carrier
- Delta on MSY to LAX, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to MSY79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to MSY70.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.