Carrier route record
WNLGA→MSY
Southwest Airlines · New York to New Orleans
- Flights
- 333
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LGA to MSY earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 53.9% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 333 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on LGA to MSY runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 234 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
53.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 317 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.20%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on LGA to MSY, 1,391 flights
These figures cover 333 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 21.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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
Southwest against every carrier on LGA to MSY
Southwest flew 333 of the 1,391 flights on LGA to MSY, about 24% of it. Its 53.9% on time is 16 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.1% to Southwest at 53.9%. Three 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 | 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 Airlines (this page)thin sample | 333 | 53.9% | 80 min | 4.20% | F− |
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 Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 333 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm13 flights—
- 2pm–5pm121 flights49.1%
- 5pm–8pm194 flights55.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 60%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 55.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 7 points.
Across the year
Southwest on LGA to MSY through the year
- Jul–Sep 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202582 flights45.0%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights70.0%
- Apr–Jun 202687 flights45.7%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights44.0%
Scale runs 35% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 53.9% on time across 333 flights.
Southwest on LGA to MSY did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 70.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 44.0%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 83 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 61.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 42.0%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on LGA to MSY runs when it is late
The 146 late arrivals split 31 under half an hour, 46 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 69 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early51 flights16.1%
- Within 15 min120 flights37.9%
- 15–29 min late31 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late46 flights14.5%
- 1–2 hours late38 flights12.0%
- 2+ hours late31 flights9.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 317 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
47 of 169 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 24 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 Southwest on LGA to MSY
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 November 2025, 5 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 November 2025 | 5 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 August 2026 | 5 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 August 2026 | 5 hours 32 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 November 2025 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 December 2025 | 4 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 15%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 to one. The split is drawn from 11,651 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.20%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
21.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 72.7% on time across 333 flights, 19 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 19 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 333 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 Southwest on LGA to MSY
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.20% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 317 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to MSY, every carrier
- Southwest on MSY to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to MSY79.1%
- American Airlines on LGA to MSY68.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.