Carrier route record
UAMSY→EWR
United Airlines · New Orleans to Newark
- Flights
- 1,014
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 84%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MSY to EWR 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,014 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MSY to EWR record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 989 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.5%
Every carrier on MSY to EWR, 1,213 flights
These figures cover 1,014 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
United against every carrier on MSY to EWR
United flew 1,014 of the 1,213 flights on MSY to EWR, most of the route. Its 84.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 90.1% to Spirit at 55.9%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 160 | 90.1% | 73 min | 5.62% | A− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,014 | 84.6% | 88 min | 1.87% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 15 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 34 | 55.9% | 105 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on MSY to EWR
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am284 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am225 flights94.6%
- 11am–2pm229 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm87 flights60.7%
- 8pm–5am184 flights81.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.7% on time, against 94.6% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 284 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on MSY to EWR through the year
July is the worst month at 60.0% on time, 37 points below February, the best at 97.3%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.6%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 46% of the 13,000 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.
- 46%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
35% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 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 13,386 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 6,128 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.87% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.59%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.4% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,167 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 78.8% on time across 1,014 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,014 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 United on MSY to EWR
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,014 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 84.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 989 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to EWR, every carrier
- United on EWR to MSY, the return leg
- Republic Airways on MSY to EWR90.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.