Carrier route record
AAMIA→MSY
American Airlines · Miami to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,310
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 86%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MIA to MSY sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,310 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on MIA to MSY runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,291 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.8%
Every carrier on MIA to MSY, 1,532 flights
These figures cover 1,310 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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
American against every carrier on MIA to MSY
American flew 1,310 of the 1,532 flights on MIA to MSY, most of the route. Its 71.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.7% to Frontier at 50.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 120 | 86.7% | 58 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 9 | 77.8% | 80 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 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–8am71 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am226 flights85.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm248 flights69.9%
- 5pm–8pm215 flights65.6%
- 8pm–5am550 flights66.5%
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 94.3% of the time, against 65.6% for the evening window. That is 29 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 550 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MIA to MSY through the year
August is the worst month at 53.1% on time, 27 points below February, the best at 80.5%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.0%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 22,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 22,358 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 8,606 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 80.5% on time across 1,307 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,310 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on MIA to MSY
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 80.5% on time and August 53.1%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,291 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to MSY, every carrier
- American on MSY to MIA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on MIA to MSY86.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.