Carrier route record
WNMSY→DEN
Southwest Airlines · New Orleans to Denver
- Flights
- 1,059
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MSY to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,059 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MSY to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
73.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,055 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on MSY to DEN, 2,270 flights
These figures cover 1,059 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MSY to DEN
Southwest flew 1,059 of the 2,270 flights on MSY to DEN, about 47% of it. Its 73.9% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.1% to Southwest at 73.9%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,016 | 87.1% | 60 min | 0.20% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 195 | 74.3% | 93 min | 2.05% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,059 | 73.9% | 53 min | 0.28% | C+ |
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 41 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–8am337 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am211 flights83.7%
- 11am–2pm62 flights85.5%
- 2pm–5pm141 flights51.8%
- 5pm–8pm273 flights55.5%
- 8pm–5am35 flights51.4%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 92.3% 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 337 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MSY to DEN through the year
June is the worst month at 55.2% on time, 26 points below November, the best at 81.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 108 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.0%. 16 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 43% of the 14,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 14,482 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 92.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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
6.6% 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 1,062 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 68.6% on time across 1,058 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,059 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 DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,059 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 73.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,055 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to MSY, the return leg
- United Airlines on MSY to DEN87.1%
- Frontier Airlines on MSY to DEN74.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.