Route reliability record
MSY→FLL
New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,397
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 673 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,397 MSY to FLL flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 604 at 78.8% on time.
Best time to fly MSY to FLL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.3%, against 75.2% for the route overall.
Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.8% on time across 604 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,364 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Spirit
78.8% on time across 604 flights
These figures cover 1,397 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 FLL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 78.8% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 71.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 425 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 604 | 78.8% | 64 min | 3.31% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 368 | 74.0% | 46 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 425 | 71.3% | 82 min | 1.88% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSY → MIANew Orleans to Miami | American Airlines | 79.5% | 80.5% | 1.30% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MSY → FLLNew Orleans to Fort Lauderdale | Spirit Airlines | 76.2% | 78.8% | 3.31% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. MSY → FLLNew Orleans to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 73.8% | 74.0% | 0.27% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. MSY → FLLNew Orleans to Fort Lauderdale | JetBlue Airways | 70.0% | 71.3% | 1.88% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am516 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am177 flights85.9%
- 11am–2pm110 flights72.5%
- 2pm–5pm329 flights63.6%
- 5pm–8pm153 flights53.5%
- 8pm–5am112 flights77.5%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.5% on time, against 85.9% 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 516 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 57.7%. August is the strongest month at 86.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 29 points. March was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.1%. 14 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 44% of the 22,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
44% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 21,978 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.08% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 673 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 67.6% on time across 1,398 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,397 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FLL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 86.4% on time and March 57.7%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,364 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to FLL questions
How often is MSY to FLL delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.8% of the 1,397 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to FLL?
Spirit Airlines leads at 78.8% on time across 604 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 71.3%, a gap of 8 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSY to FLL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.5%, 32 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 FLL?
March is the weakest month at 57.7% on time, compared with 86.4% in August. Across the year that is 29 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
- FLL to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to FLL78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to FLL74.0%
- JetBlue Airways on MSY to FLL71.3%
- MSY to ATL, a related route83.3%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- MSY to IAH, a related route82.2%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.0%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MSY to FLL and FLL 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.