Carrier route record

DLMSY→JFK

Delta Air Lines · New Orleans to New York

Flights: 720
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 63%
Carriers: 3

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

Delta on MSY to JFK lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 720 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSY to JFK record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 677 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.7%

Every carrier on MSY to JFK, 1,142 flights

These figures cover 720 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

Delta against every carrier on MSY to JFK

Delta flew 720 of the 1,142 flights on MSY to JFK, most of the route. Its 82.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.0% to Frontier at 71.4%. 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 JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	720	82.0%	69 min	5.56%	B−
JetBlue Airways	415	73.2%	95 min	3.37%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	7	71.4%	96 min	0.00%	C+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on MSY to JFK

DL 138719:5582.8% · 302 flights

Departure window

When Delta 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 720 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am57 flights85.2%
11am–2pm307 flights83.4%
2pm–5pm6 flights—
5pm–8pm154 flights75.5%
8pm–5am196 flights83.4%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.2% of the time, against 75.5% for the evening window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 307 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MSY to JFK through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, June worst

June is the worst month at 74.5% on time, 14 points below March, the best at 88.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 76.2%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 8,379 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
48%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
21%

48% 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 8,379 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 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 8,379 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 85.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.56%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,182 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 runs 83.6% on time across 720 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 720 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 Delta on MSY to JFK

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.56% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 677 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