Route reliability record
MSY→CLT
New Orleans to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,742
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 650 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,742 MSY to CLT flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 94.5%, against 82.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,718 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
82.6% on time across 1,644 flights
These figures cover 1,742 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 CLT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 13 | 92.3% | 189 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 85.7% | 86 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,644 | 82.6% | 98 min | 1.40% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 66 | 81.8% | 141 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 20 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–8am439 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am350 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm291 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm350 flights76.7%
- 5pm–8pm312 flights71.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 71.3% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 439 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 69.5% on time, 20 points below April, the best at 89.9%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 168 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%. 19 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 51% of the 30,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
51% 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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 29,667 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 10,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.32% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 650 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 78.6% on time across 1,742 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 1,742 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 CLT 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. April runs 89.9% on time and June 69.5%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,718 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to CLT questions
How often is MSY to CLT delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.3% of the 1,742 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MSY to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
82.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 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 CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.3%, 20 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 CLT?
June is the weakest month at 69.5% on time, compared with 89.9% in April. Across the year that is 20 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
- CLT to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- MSY to ATL, a related route83.3%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- MSY to IAH, a related route82.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record92.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record85.7%
- American Airlines on-time record82.6%
- 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 CLT and CLT 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.