Carrier route record

NKMSY→ATL

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Atlanta

Flights: 183
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 5

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

Spirit on MSY to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 183 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MSY to ATL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 178 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.73%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.3%

Every carrier on MSY to ATL, 4,056 flights

These figures cover 183 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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

Spirit against every carrier on MSY to ATL

Spirit flew 183 of the 4,056 flights on MSY to ATL, about 5% of it. Its 70.8% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Frontier at 56.8%. 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.

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	3,278	87.3%	65 min	1.59%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin 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

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 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–8am38 flights86.5%
8am–11am3 flights—
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm62 flights67.2%
5pm–8pm53 flights61.5%
8pm–5am24 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 86.5% 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 62 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 202584 flights77.8%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights67.0%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 85%. 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 70.8% on time across 183 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on MSY to ATL logged 84 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 92 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 70.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 72.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.1%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 4,493 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

46% 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 4,493 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 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 4,493 reported delay minutes.

33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,469 minutes out of 4,493, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 2.73%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.8% 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.

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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.6% on time across 180 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 183 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 Spirit on MSY to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 183 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 70.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 178 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