Carrier route record
WNMSY→AUS
Southwest Airlines · New Orleans to Austin
- Flights
- 1,539
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 78%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MSY to AUS lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 1,539 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MSY to AUS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,530 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.8%
Every carrier on MSY to AUS, 1,976 flights
These figures cover 1,539 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Southwest against every carrier on MSY to AUS
Southwest flew 1,539 of the 1,976 flights on MSY to AUS, most of the route. Its 76.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 78.4% to Frontier at 50.0%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 433 | 78.4% | 85 min | 0.46% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,539 | 76.5% | 54 min | 0.39% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 50.0% | 84 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am329 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am298 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm258 flights70.7%
- 2pm–5pm350 flights64.5%
- 5pm–8pm81 flights66.2%
- 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 350 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MSY to AUS through the year
July is the worst month at 64.2% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 88.0%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.8%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MSY to AUS runs when it is late
The 360 late arrivals split 141 under half an hour, 130 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 89 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early261 flights17.1%
- Within 15 min909 flights59.4%
- 15–29 min late141 flights9.2%
- 30–59 min late130 flights8.5%
- 1–2 hours late54 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late35 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,530 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
96 of 406 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 50 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MSY to AUS
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 8 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 8 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 May 2026 | 4 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 May 2026 | 4 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 August 2026 | 4 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 July 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 19,317 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 0.39%, 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 costs
5.8% 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 roughly 55 minutes, 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 75.3% on time across 1,497 flights, within about 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 1,539 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 Southwest on MSY to AUS
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 88.0% on time and July 64.2%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,530 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to AUS, every carrier
- Southwest on AUS to MSY, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MSY to AUS78.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.