Carrier route record

DLMSY→ATL

Delta Air Lines · New Orleans to Atlanta

Flights: 3,278
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 81%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on MSY to ATL earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 3,278 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSY to ATL record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,219 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.59%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.3%

Every carrier on MSY to ATL, 4,056 flights

These figures cover 3,278 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on MSY to ATL

Delta flew 3,278 of the 4,056 flights on MSY to ATL, most of the route. Its 87.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Frontier at 56.8%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	2	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	3,278	87.3%	65 min	1.59%	A
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	183	70.8%	86 min	2.73%	C
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	361	70.8%	46 min	0.28%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	232	56.8%	74 min	1.29%	D

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on MSY to ATL

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 11 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–8am1,011 flights91.5%
8am–11am531 flights91.7%
11am–2pm613 flights88.5%
2pm–5pm478 flights80.9%
5pm–8pm645 flights80.7%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 80.7% for the evening window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 1,011 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MSY to ATL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, May worst

September is the best month on the calendar at 98.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 309 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.2%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

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 27,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
3%

40% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 26,679 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.7% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 425 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 3,275 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.

The sample behind these figures is 3,278 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 Delta on MSY to ATL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 98.0% on time and May 80.6%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 3,219 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures