Carrier route record
AAMSY→LGA
American Airlines · New Orleans to New York
- Flights
- 345
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MSY to LGA draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 345 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on MSY to LGA runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 180 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 329 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on MSY to LGA, 1,391 flights
These figures cover 345 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 21.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on MSY to LGA
American flew 345 of the 1,391 flights on MSY to LGA, about 25% of it. Its 59.3% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 74.7% to Frontier at 50.0%. Three 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 | 689 | 74.7% | 91 min | 4.93% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 333 | 72.7% | 52 min | 2.10% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 20 | 63.2% | 61 min | 5.00% | D− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 345 | 59.3% | 101 min | 3.19% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 50.0% | 46 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm196 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm141 flights51.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.9% on time, against 63.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 196 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MSY to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights51.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights71.4%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights58.5%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights41.7%
Scale runs 35% to 75%. 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 59.3% on time across 345 flights.
American on MSY to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 41.7%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 86 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 31 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on MSY to LGA runs when it is late
When American on MSY to LGA is late it tends to be very late: 70 of its 134 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 29 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early48 flights14.6%
- Within 15 min147 flights44.7%
- 15–29 min late30 flights9.1%
- 30–59 min late34 flights10.3%
- 1–2 hours late41 flights12.5%
- 2+ hours late29 flights8.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 329 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 122 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 14 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 26 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for American on MSY to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 January 2026, 16 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 January 2026 | 16 hours 55 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 26 December 2025 | 14 hours 58 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 23 June 2026 | 9 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 April 2026 | 6 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 February 2026 | 5 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 19% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,524 reported delay minutes.
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.19%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
21.3% 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.
The 1,183 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.4% on time across 345 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 345 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 American on MSY to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 329 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to LGA, every carrier
- American on LGA to MSY, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSY to LGA74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to LGA72.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.