Carrier route record
WNMSY→DCA
Southwest Airlines · New Orleans to Washington
- Flights
- 706
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 36%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MSY to DCA sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 706 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 458 at 74.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on MSY to DCA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 94 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 695 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.1%
Every carrier on MSY to DCA, 1,952 flights
These figures cover 706 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MSY to DCA
Southwest flew 706 of the 1,952 flights on MSY to DCA, about 36% of it. Its 68.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.6% to PSA at 67.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 74.4% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 558 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 230 | 82.6% | 52 min | 1.74% | B |
| American Airlines | 458 | 74.4% | 81 min | 3.06% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 706 | 68.2% | 67 min | 0.99% | C+ |
| PSA Airlines | 558 | 67.4% | 125 min | 5.73% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 5.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 44 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am295 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm39 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm172 flights64.5%
- 5pm–8pm188 flights41.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 41.8% on time, against 85.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 295 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MSY to DCA through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 56.5%. January is the strongest month at 77.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. March was the busiest month here, with 67 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.0%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 15,000 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
- 28%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 3%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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 14,804 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 969 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 72.1% on time across 706 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. 706 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 Southwest on MSY to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 706 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 68.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 695 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to DCA, every carrier
- Southwest on DCA to MSY, the return leg
- Republic Airways on MSY to DCA82.6%
- American Airlines on MSY to DCA74.4%
- PSA Airlines on MSY to DCA67.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.