Route reliability record
MSY→BWI
New Orleans to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,180
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 998 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,180 MSY to BWI flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.9%, against 80.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,160 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.1% on time across 1,030 flights
These figures cover 1,180 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to BWI
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,030 | 81.1% | 56 min | 1.55% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 132 | 80.2% | 53 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 77.8% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New Orleans to Baltimore
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSY → BWINew Orleans to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 79.8% | 81.1% | 1.55% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. MSY → DCANew Orleans to Washington | American Airlines | 72.1% | 74.4% | 3.06% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. MSY → DCANew Orleans to Washington | Southwest Airlines | 67.5% | 68.2% | 0.99% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 4. MSY → DCANew Orleans to Washington | PSA Airlines | 63.5% | 67.4% | 5.73% | 5am–8am, 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 35 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–8am372 flights95.4%
- 8am–11am216 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm128 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm277 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm163 flights60.1%
- 8pm–5am24 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.1% on time, against 95.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 372 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 March, when the on-time rate falls to 73.4%. August is the strongest month at 88.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 16 points. October was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.6%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 12,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
53% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 12,185 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 95.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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.
The 998 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 1,180 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 1,180 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 BWI 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. August runs 88.9% on time and March 73.4%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,160 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to BWI questions
How often is MSY to BWI delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.1% of the 1,180 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MSY to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
80.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSY to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.1%, 35 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 March delays on MSY to BWI?
March is the weakest month at 73.4% on time, compared with 88.9% in August. Across the year that is 16 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
- BWI to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to BWI81.1%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to BWI80.2%
- MSY to ATL, a related route83.3%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- MSY to IAH, a related route82.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record80.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MSY to BWI and BWI 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.