Route reliability record
MCO→MSY
Orlando to New Orleans
- Flights
- 2,254
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 551 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,254 MCO to MSY flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 1,625 at 74.2% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.2%, against 74.4% 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
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,224 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.15%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.2% on time across 1,625 flights
These figures cover 2,254 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to MSY
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 234 | 79.5% | 74 min | 1.71% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,625 | 74.2% | 61 min | 0.49% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 395 | 72.2% | 71 min | 3.54% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to New Orleans
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → MSYOrlando to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 73.8% | 74.2% | 0.49% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. MCO → MSYOrlando to New Orleans | Spirit Airlines | 69.6% | 72.2% | 3.54% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 31 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am314 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am398 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm192 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm507 flights70.8%
- 5pm–8pm450 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am393 flights61.5%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 92.0% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 507 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO 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 MCO to MSY, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.5%, a wide gap of 30.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.0%
- 8–11am86.9%
- 11am–2pm78.4%
- 2–5pm70.8%
- 5–8pm64.2%
- 8pm–5am61.5%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
August is the worst month at 67.2% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 87.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.3%, a spread of 23 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 36,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 36,248 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 92.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.5% 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 551 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 77.5% on time across 2,225 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,254 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. September runs 87.3% on time and August 67.2%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,224 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to MSY questions
How often is MCO to MSY delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.6% of the 2,254 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to MSY?
Southwest Airlines leads at 74.2% on time across 1,625 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 72.2%, a gap of 2 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.5%, 31 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 August delays on MCO to MSY?
August is the weakest month at 67.2% on time, compared with 87.3% in September. Across the year that is 20 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 MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to MSY79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to MSY74.2%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to MSY72.2%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.2%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record72.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MCO to MSY and MSY to MCO 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.