Route reliability record
MSY→DTW
New Orleans to Detroit
- Flights
- 785
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 926 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 785 MSY to DTW flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to DTW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.8% of the time and Saturday flights 92.0%, against 83.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 768 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
84.1% on time across 621 flights
These figures cover 785 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to DTW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 621 | 84.1% | 75 min | 2.09% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 80.1% | 102 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 72.7% | 64 min | 4.35% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSY to DTW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 785 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am33 flights84.8%
- 11am–2pm355 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm134 flights82.7%
- 5pm–8pm249 flights82.6%
- 8pm–5am14 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The time of day barely matters here. The 8am–11am window tops the set at 84.8% and 5pm–8pm sits at 82.6%, 2 points apart across 785 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 355 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSY to DTW 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 DTW, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 84.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 82.6%, a narrow gap of 2.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.8%
- 11am–2pm84.1%
- 2–5pm82.7%
- 5–8pm82.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
July is the worst month at 73.1% on time, 17 points below October, the best at 90.2%. 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 92 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.9%, a spread of 18 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 10,408 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,988 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.78% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 926 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.
The return leg runs 86.0% on time across 786 flights, within 3 points 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. 785 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DTW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 785 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 83.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 768 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to DTW questions
How often is MSY to DTW 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 16.9% of the 785 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MSY to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
83.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 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 DTW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.6%, 2 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 July delays on MSY to DTW?
July is the weakest month at 73.1% on time, compared with 90.2% in October. Across the year that is 17 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
- DTW to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSY to DTW84.1%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to DTW80.1%
- MSY to ATL, a related route82.2%
- ORD to DTW, a related route71.1%
- MSY to IAH, a related route83.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record80.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSY to DTW and DTW 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.