Route reliability record
MSY→DTW
New Orleans to Detroit
- Flights
- 827
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 926 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 827 MSY to DTW flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to DTW: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 92.7%, against 83.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 812 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
85.4% on time across 628 flights
These figures cover 827 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
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 | 628 | 85.4% | 60 min | 1.59% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 176 | 79.4% | 99 min | 0.57% | 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.
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 827 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am35 flights82.9%
- 11am–2pm359 flights85.0%
- 2pm–5pm154 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm263 flights83.9%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The time of day barely matters here. The 11am–2pm window tops the set at 85.0% and 2pm–5pm sits at 82.4%, 3 points apart across 827 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 359 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 90.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.4%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 9,362 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
54% 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 9,362 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 9,362 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.4% 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 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. 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 runs 84.8% on time across 828 flights, within about 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. 827 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. 827 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 812 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 16.3% of the 827 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
83.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.4%, 3 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 March delays on MSY to DTW?
March is the weakest month at 75.9% on time, compared with 90.2% in October. Across the year that is 14 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 DTW85.4%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to DTW79.4%
- MSY to ATL, a related route83.3%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- MSY to IAH, a related route82.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record79.4%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.