Route reliability record
MSY→HOU
New Orleans to Houston
- Flights
- 2,276
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 303 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,276 MSY to HOU flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.8%, against 75.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,261 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.9% on time across 2,276 flights
These figures cover 2,276 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to HOU
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,276 | 75.9% | 50 min | 0.66% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New Orleans to Houston
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 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSY → IAHNew Orleans to Houston | United Airlines | 82.9% | 83.2% | 0.36% | 8am–11am, Wed | UA 2744 05:15 |
| 2. MSY → HOUNew Orleans to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 75.4% | 75.9% | 0.66% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 33 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am425 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am459 flights90.4%
- 11am–2pm339 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm485 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm382 flights59.8%
- 8pm–5am186 flights63.2%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 93.1% for the 5am–8am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 485 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSY to HOU by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MSY to HOU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.8%, a wide gap of 33.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.1%
- 8–11am90.4%
- 11am–2pm72.2%
- 2–5pm67.6%
- 5–8pm59.8%
- 8pm–5am63.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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 56.3%. January is the strongest month at 90.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 34 points. October was the busiest month here, with 206 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.5%, a spread of 20 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 27,113 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
5.6% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 303 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.6% on time across 2,289 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,276 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 HOU 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. January runs 90.1% on time and March 56.3%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,261 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to HOU questions
How often is MSY to HOU 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 24.1% of the 2,276 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is MSY to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
75.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSY to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.8%, 33 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 HOU?
March is the weakest month at 56.3% on time, compared with 90.1% in January. Across the year that is 34 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
- HOU to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- MSY to ATL, a related route82.2%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- MSY to IAH, a related route83.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MSY to HOU and HOU 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.