Carrier route record
NKMSY→LAX
Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 123
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on MSY to LAX lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 123 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Spirit on MSY to LAX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 121 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on MSY to LAX, 1,428 flights
These figures cover 123 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Spirit against every carrier on MSY to LAX
Spirit flew 123 of the 1,428 flights on MSY to LAX, about 9% of it. Its 79.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.0% to Southwest at 65.4%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 949 | 83.0% | 80 min | 0.53% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 123 | 79.3% | 104 min | 1.63% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 356 | 65.4% | 55 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 123 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Spirit's MSY to LAX record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 79.3% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Spirit on MSY to LAX through the year
- Jul–Sep 202518 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202598 flights82.5%
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 79.3% on time across 123 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on MSY to LAX logged 18 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 98 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 79.3% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Spirit on MSY to LAX runs when it is late
When Spirit on MSY to LAX is late it tends to be very late: 15 of its 25 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 10 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early29 flights24.0%
- Within 15 min67 flights55.4%
- 15–29 min late4 flights3.3%
- 30–59 min late6 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights4.1%
- 2+ hours late10 flights8.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 121 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 38 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 14 still arrived on time. Only 1 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Spirit on MSY to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 December 2025, 4 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 December 2025 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 October 2025 | 3 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 October 2025 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 November 2025 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 September 2025 | 3 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 2,589 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,589 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 to one. The split is drawn from 2,589 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 917 of the 2,589 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.63% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.6% on time across 126 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 123 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 LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 123 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 79.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 121 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to LAX, every carrier
- Spirit on LAX to MSY, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSY to LAX83.0%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to LAX65.4%
- Spirit Airlines 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.