Carrier route record
DLMSY→LAX
Delta Air Lines · New Orleans to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 949
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSY to LAX lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 949 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSY to LAX record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 941 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on MSY to LAX, 1,428 flights
These figures cover 949 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSY to LAX
Delta flew 949 of the 1,428 flights on MSY to LAX, most of the route. Its 83.0% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.0% to Southwest at 65.4%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 949 | 83.0% | 80 min | 0.53% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 123 | 79.3% | 104 min | 1.63% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 356 | 65.4% | 55 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSY to LAX
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am278 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am86 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm358 flights78.9%
- 5pm–8pm146 flights75.9%
- 8pm–5am81 flights71.2%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.8% of the time, against 71.2% for the overnight window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSY to LAX through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 90.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.7%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSY to LAX runs when it is late
Delta on MSY to LAX often beats the schedule: 386 of 941 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 160 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 47 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 55 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early386 flights41.0%
- Within 15 min395 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late58 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late47 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late31 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late24 flights2.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 941 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
48 of 172 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 36 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSY to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 December 2025, 16 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 December 2025 | 16 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 April 2026 | 14 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 January 2026 | 10 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 February 2026 | 7 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 April 2026 | 7 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,792 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,758 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 92.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, 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 costs
5.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,671 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 81.5% on time across 949 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. 949 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 LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 949 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 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 941 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to MSY, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to LAX79.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to LAX65.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.