Route reliability record
MSY→AUS
New Orleans to Austin
- Flights
- 1,976
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 445 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,976 MSY to AUS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 433 at 78.4% on time.
Best time to fly MSY to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.3%, against 76.8% 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
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,964 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.4% on time across 433 flights
These figures cover 1,976 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to AUS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 433 | 78.4% | 85 min | 0.46% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,539 | 76.5% | 54 min | 0.39% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 50.0% | 84 min | 0.00% | F+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 78.4%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MSY to AUS
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New Orleans to Austin
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. MSY → AUSNew Orleans to Austin | SkyWest Airlines | 78.0% | 78.4% | 0.46% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | OO 4016 16:10 |
| 2. MSY → AUSNew Orleans to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 76.2% | 76.5% | 0.39% | 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 30 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am329 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am367 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm266 flights70.8%
- 2pm–5pm633 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm158 flights77.6%
- 8pm–5am223 flights64.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.3% on time, against 94.2% 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 633 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSY to AUS 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 MSY to AUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 64.3%, a wide gap of 29.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.2%
- 8–11am88.0%
- 11am–2pm70.8%
- 2–5pm68.1%
- 5–8pm77.6%
- 8pm–5am64.3%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
June is the worst month at 64.2% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 89.2%. 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 198 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.8%, a spread of 21 points.
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 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 8%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. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 27,365 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 94.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
At 445 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 runs 76.2% on time across 1,934 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,976 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 AUS 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 89.2% on time and June 64.2%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,964 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to AUS questions
How often is MSY to AUS 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 23.2% of the 1,976 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to AUS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 78.4% on time across 433 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.5%, 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 MSY to AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.3%, 30 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 June delays on MSY to AUS?
June is the weakest month at 64.2% on time, compared with 89.2% in September. Across the year that is 25 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
- AUS to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on MSY to AUS78.4%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to AUS76.5%
- MSY to ATL, a related route82.2%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.2%
- MSY to IAH, a related route83.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record50.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MSY to AUS and AUS to MSY 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.