Carrier route record
NKMSY→DTW
Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Detroit
- Flights
- 141
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MSY to DTW lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 141 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MSY to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 141 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.1%
Every carrier on MSY to DTW, 785 flights
These figures cover 141 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on MSY to DTW
Spirit flew 141 of the 785 flights on MSY to DTW, about 18% of it. Its 80.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.1% to Frontier at 72.7%. One 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 | 621 | 84.1% | 75 min | 2.09% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 141 | 80.1% | 102 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 72.7% | 64 min | 4.35% | 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.
Departure window
When Spirit 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 141 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's MSY to DTW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 80.1% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Spirit on MSY to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights88.1%
- Jan–Mar 202653 flights75.5%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. 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 80.1% on time across 141 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on MSY to DTW logged 21 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 67 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 53 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on MSY to DTW runs when it is late
The 28 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early25 flights17.7%
- Within 15 min88 flights62.4%
- 15–29 min late6 flights4.3%
- 30–59 min late9 flights6.4%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights2.8%
- 2+ hours late9 flights6.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 141 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
4 of 31 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. Only 1 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on MSY to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 September 2025, 7 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 September 2025 | 7 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 March 2026 | 5 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 October 2025 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 February 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 September 2025 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 2,842 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,842 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 to one. The split is drawn from 2,842 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
9.2% 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.
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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.7% on time across 142 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 141 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 DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 141 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 80.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 141 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to MSY, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSY to DTW84.1%
- Spirit Airlines 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.