Route reliability record
MIA→MSY
Miami to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,532
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 674 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,532 MIA to MSY flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly MIA to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.5%, against 72.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,509 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
71.8% on time across 1,310 flights
These figures cover 1,532 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MIA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 120 | 86.7% | 58 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 9 | 77.8% | 80 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,310 | 71.8% | 61 min | 1.07% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 68.2% | 79 min | 4.49% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 50.0% | 21 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Miami to New Orleans
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | Spirit Airlines | 71.2% | 73.6% | 3.31% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. MIA → MSYMiami to New Orleans | American Airlines | 71.0% | 71.8% | 1.07% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 66.6% | 66.6% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. FLL → MSYFort Lauderdale to New Orleans | JetBlue Airways | 59.0% | 60.0% | 1.64% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
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 27 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–8am82 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am310 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm18 flights—
- 2pm–5pm303 flights71.0%
- 5pm–8pm264 flights65.5%
- 8pm–5am555 flights66.7%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.6% of the time, against 65.5% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 555 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
July is the worst month at 56.7% on time, 24 points below January, the best at 80.2%. 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 140 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.7%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 25,612 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 9,110 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.17% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.9% 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.
The 674 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.8% on time across 1,529 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,532 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. January runs 80.2% on time and July 56.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,509 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MIA to MSY questions
How often is MIA to MSY delayed?
Roughly 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 27.2% of the 1,532 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MIA to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
72.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MIA to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.5%, 27 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 July delays on MIA to MSY?
July is the weakest month at 56.7% on time, compared with 80.2% in January. Across the year that is 24 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 MIA — the return legseparate record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MIA to MSY86.7%
- American Airlines on MIA to MSY71.8%
- MIA to ATL, a related route73.7%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- MIA to LGA, a related route68.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.8%
- American Airlines on-time record71.8%
- 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. MIA to MSY and MSY to MIA 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.