Carrier route record

NKMSY→BWI

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Baltimore

Flights: 132
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on MSY to BWI 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 roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 132 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MSY to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 131 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.76%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.9%

Every carrier on MSY to BWI, 1,180 flights

These figures cover 132 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

Spirit against every carrier on MSY to BWI

Spirit flew 132 of the 1,180 flights on MSY to BWI, about 11% of it. Its 80.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 81.1% to Frontier at 77.8%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to BWI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	1,030	81.1%	56 min	1.55%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	132	80.2%	53 min	0.76%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	18	77.8%	46 min	0.00%	B+

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 13 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–8am10 flights—
8am–11am46 flights86.7%
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm73 flights74.0%
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.7% of the time, against 74.0% for the afternoon window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 73 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to BWI through the year

Jul–Sep 202563 flights80.6%
Oct–Dec 202565 flights84.6%
Jan–Mar 20264 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 80.2% on time across 132 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on MSY to BWI logged 63 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 65 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 4 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 80.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 1,387 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.

Carrier
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
0%

39% 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 1,387 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 1,387 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 672 of the 1,387 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.1% 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 roughly 55 minutes, 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 84.5% on time across 131 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 132 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 BWI

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 132 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 80.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 131 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