Carrier route record

NKMSY→LAX

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Los Angeles

Flights: 179
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 3

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

Spirit on MSY to LAX lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 179 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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.

On time

80.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 176 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.12%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.1%

Every carrier on MSY to LAX, 1,499 flights

These figures cover 179 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on MSY to LAX

Spirit flew 179 of the 1,499 flights on MSY to LAX, about 12% of it. Its 80.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.0% to Southwest at 69.4%. 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 LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	959	84.0%	85 min	0.52%	B+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	179	80.7%	90 min	1.12%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	361	69.4%	51 min	0.00%	C+

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am24 flights—
8am–11am18 flights—
11am–2pm11 flights—
2pm–5pm57 flights89.5%
5pm–8pm11 flights—
8pm–5am58 flights64.3%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.3% on time, against 89.5% for the 2pm–5pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 58 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202574 flights82.2%
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 80.7% on time across 179 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on MSY to LAX logged 74 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 80.7% 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 45% of the 3,045 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
45%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
1%

45% 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 3,045 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 3,045 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,049 of the 3,045 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.56%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 runs 79.5% on time across 180 flights, within about a point 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. 179 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. 179 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 80.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 176 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