Carrier route record

NKMSY→DTW

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Detroit

Flights: 176
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on MSY to DTW lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 176 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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.

On time

79.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 175 completed flights

Avg delay

99 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.57%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.7%

Every carrier on MSY to DTW, 827 flights

These figures cover 176 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 DTW

Spirit flew 176 of the 827 flights on MSY to DTW, about 21% of it. Its 79.4% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.4% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	628	85.4%	60 min	1.59%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	176	79.4%	99 min	0.57%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	23	72.7%	64 min	4.35%	C−

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 176 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 79.4% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to DTW through the year

Jul–Sep 202556 flights72.7%
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 79.4% on time across 176 flights.

Spirit on MSY to DTW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 88.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 72.7%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 59 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.6%. 14 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 51% of the 3,558 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
1%

51% 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 3,558 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 3,558 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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. 9.1% 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.

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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.0% on time across 177 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. 176 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. 176 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 79.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures