Carrier route record
DLMSY→DTW
Delta Air Lines · New Orleans to Detroit
- Flights
- 621
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSY to DTW earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 621 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSY to DTW record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 605 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.1%
Every carrier on MSY to DTW, 785 flights
These figures cover 621 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Delta against every carrier on MSY to DTW
Delta flew 621 of the 785 flights on MSY to DTW, most of the route. Its 84.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.1% to Frontier at 72.7%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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
Delta flight numbers on MSY to DTW
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
When Delta runs best on this route
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 621 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm355 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm36 flights88.6%
- 5pm–8pm227 flights83.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 88.6% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 83.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 355 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSY to DTW through the year
July is the worst month at 73.1% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 93.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.1%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSY to DTW runs when it is late
Delta on MSY to DTW often beats the schedule: 165 of 605 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 96 late arrivals split 40 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early165 flights27.3%
- Within 15 min344 flights56.9%
- 15–29 min late40 flights6.6%
- 30–59 min late26 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late14 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 605 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 88 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 24 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSY to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 July 2026, 16 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 July 2026 | 16 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 December 2025 | 7 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 December 2025 | 7 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 July 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 June 2026 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 7,185 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,185 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 to one. The split is drawn from 7,185 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,920 of the 7,185 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.48%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.0% 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 86.2% on time across 621 flights, within 2 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. 621 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 Delta on MSY to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 621 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 605 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to MSY, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to DTW80.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.