Carrier route record
NKMSY→DFW
Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 189
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MSY to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 189 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MSY to DFW runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 181 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on MSY to DFW, 2,804 flights
These figures cover 189 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.3% 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
Spirit against every carrier on MSY to DFW
Spirit flew 189 of the 2,804 flights on MSY to DFW, about 7% of it. Its 72.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 76.5% to PSA at 57.1%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 76.5% | 100 min | 2.86% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,346 | 72.7% | 101 min | 3.41% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 189 | 72.4% | 81 min | 4.23% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 211 | 69.0% | 80 min | 2.84% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 57.1% | 63 min | 8.70% | D− |
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 11 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–8am—
- 8am–11am89 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm46 flights67.4%
- 2pm–5pm20 flights—
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am32 flights71.9%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 67.4% on time against 78.6% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 89 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on MSY to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202551 flights72.5%
- Oct–Dec 202542 flights78.6%
- Jan–Mar 202673 flights73.8%
- Apr–Jun 202623 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 72.4% on time across 189 flights.
Quarter by quarter Spirit on MSY to DFW held fairly steady: 72.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 78.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 73.8% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.3%. 28 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 4,048 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 1%Security
58% 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 4,048 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 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 4,048 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 78.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.23%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.3% 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.
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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 72.2% on time across 184 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 189 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 DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.23% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 181 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to DFW, every carrier
- Spirit on DFW to MSY, the return leg
- American Airlines on MSY to DFW72.7%
- Envoy Air on MSY to DFW69.0%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.