Route reliability record
MSY→BOS
New Orleans to Boston
- Flights
- 861
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,367 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 861 MSY to BOS flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 372 at 62.9% on time.
Best time to fly MSY to BOS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 79.7% of the time and Saturday flights 71.9%, against 61.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 154 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 843 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
62.9% on time across 372 flights
These figures cover 861 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to BOS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 372 | 62.9% | 83 min | 2.15% | D |
| JetBlue Airways | 479 | 61.2% | 87 min | 2.09% | D |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 50.0% | 39 min | 0.00% | F+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 62.9%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New Orleans to Boston
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 → BOSNew Orleans to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 61.5% | 62.9% | 2.15% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | — |
| 2. MSY → BOSNew Orleans to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 59.9% | 61.2% | 2.09% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 27 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am54 flights78.8%
- 8am–11am70 flights79.7%
- 11am–2pm139 flights57.6%
- 2pm–5pm506 flights60.4%
- 5pm–8pm91 flights52.8%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.8% on time, against 79.7% for the 8am–11am 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 506 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSY to BOS 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 BOS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 79.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 52.8%, a wide gap of 26.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am78.8%
- 8–11am79.7%
- 11am–2pm57.6%
- 2–5pm60.4%
- 5–8pm52.8%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 48 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.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 30.5%. January is the strongest month at 78.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 48 points. October was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.6%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%National Airspace System
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 22 to one. The split is drawn from 27,187 reported delay minutes.
44% 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 12,000 minutes out of 27,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
18.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,367 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.4% on time across 863 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 861 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BOS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 861 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 61.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 843 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to BOS questions
How often is MSY to BOS delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 38.1% of the 861 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to BOS?
Delta Air Lines leads at 62.9% on time across 372 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 61.2%, 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 BOS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 79.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 52.8%, 27 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 September delays on MSY to BOS?
September is the weakest month at 30.5% on time, compared with 78.3% in January. Across the year that is 48 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
- BOS to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSY to BOS62.9%
- JetBlue Airways on MSY to BOS61.2%
- MSY to ATL, a related route82.2%
- DCA to BOS, a related route70.1%
- MSY to IAH, a related route83.2%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record62.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record61.2%
- 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 BOS and BOS 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.