Carrier route record

NKMSY→IAH

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Houston

Flights: 146
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

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

Spirit on MSY to IAH lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 146 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MSY to IAH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 145 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.68%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.2%

Every carrier on MSY to IAH, 2,961 flights

These figures cover 146 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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

Spirit against every carrier on MSY to IAH

Spirit flew 146 of the 2,961 flights on MSY to IAH, about 5% of it. Its 77.9% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.4% to SkyWest at 75.0%. Two 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 IAH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	2,784	82.4%	74 min	0.47%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	27	80.8%	305 min	3.70%	B−
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	146	77.9%	65 min	0.68%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	4	75.0%	122 min	0.00%	B+

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 146 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's MSY to IAH record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 77.9% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to IAH through the year

Jul–Sep 202587 flights79.1%
Oct–Dec 202559 flights76.3%

Scale runs 70% to 85%. 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 77.9% on time across 146 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on MSY to IAH logged 87 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 59 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 77.9% annual figure is the one to use.

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 2,092 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
26%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
3%

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 2,092 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 2,092 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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

5.5% 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.

At 305 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.7% on time across 148 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 146 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 IAH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 146 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 77.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 145 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