Carrier route record
DLLGA→MSY
Delta Air Lines · New York to New Orleans
- Flights
- 689
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to MSY lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About 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 689 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on LGA to MSY from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 656 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on LGA to MSY, 1,391 flights
These figures cover 689 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 LGA to MSY
Delta flew 689 of the 1,391 flights on LGA to MSY, about 50% of it. Its 79.1% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.1% to Southwest at 53.9%. Four 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) | 689 | 79.1% | 73 min | 4.79% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 345 | 68.4% | 78 min | 2.90% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 20 | 68.4% | 41 min | 5.00% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 333 | 53.9% | 80 min | 4.20% | F− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LGA 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am275 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am90 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm320 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 67.6% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 320 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to MSY through the year
December is the weak month at 63.0% on time, against 89.1% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.5%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LGA to MSY runs when it is late
Delta on LGA to MSY often beats the schedule: 241 of 656 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 137 late arrivals split 50 under half an hour, 39 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 48 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early241 flights36.7%
- Within 15 min278 flights42.4%
- 15–29 min late50 flights7.6%
- 30–59 min late39 flights5.9%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights4.0%
- 2+ hours late22 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 656 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 101 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 56 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 LGA to MSY
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 February 2026, 16 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 February 2026 | 16 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 June 2026 | 5 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 July 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 5 August 2026 | 4 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 August 2026 | 4 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 9,969 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,956 of the 9,969 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,969 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.79%, 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
7.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,183 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.7% on time across 689 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 689 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 LGA to MSY
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.79% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 656 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to MSY, every carrier
- Delta on MSY to LGA, the return leg
- American Airlines on LGA to MSY68.4%
- Southwest Airlines on LGA to MSY53.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.