Route reliability record
MSY→DFW
New Orleans to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,816
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 448 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,816 MSY to DFW flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.6%, against 74.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,729 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
74.3% on time across 2,364 flights
These figures cover 2,816 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to DFW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 15 | 80.0% | 71 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 193 | 74.5% | 59 min | 1.55% | C |
| American Airlines | 2,364 | 74.3% | 104 min | 2.88% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 155 | 74.1% | 88 min | 5.16% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 68.2% | 89 min | 1.12% | C |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New Orleans to Dallas-Fort Worth
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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSY → DALNew Orleans to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 76.2% | 77.1% | 1.14% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MSY → DFWNew Orleans to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 72.2% | 74.3% | 2.88% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am628 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am656 flights79.8%
- 11am–2pm452 flights76.5%
- 2pm–5pm520 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm434 flights57.5%
- 8pm–5am126 flights57.1%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% on time, against 84.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 656 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSY to DFW by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MSY to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.1%, a wide gap of 27.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.3%
- 8–11am79.8%
- 11am–2pm76.5%
- 2–5pm70.7%
- 5–8pm57.5%
- 8pm–5am57.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 62.7% on time, 21 points below February, the best at 83.7%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 258 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.6%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 70,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 70,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 70,266 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 84.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.84%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 448 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.2% on time across 2,815 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,816 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 DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,729 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to DFW questions
How often is MSY to DFW delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.9% of the 2,816 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MSY to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
74.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSY to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.1%, 27 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 DFW?
June is the weakest month at 62.7% on time, compared with 83.7% in February. Across the year that is 21 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
- DFW to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MSY to DFW74.5%
- American Airlines on MSY to DFW74.3%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to DFW74.1%
- MSY to ATL, a related route82.2%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- MSY to IAH, a related route83.2%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.5%
- American Airlines on-time record74.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MSY to DFW and DFW 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.