Carrier route record
AAMSY→LGA
American Airlines · New Orleans to New York
- Flights
- 345
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MSY to LGA draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half 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 77.6%, so American on MSY to LGA runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 169 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 328 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.6%
Every carrier on MSY to LGA, 1,421 flights
These figures cover 345 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.9% 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
American against every carrier on MSY to LGA
American flew 345 of the 1,421 flights on MSY to LGA, about 24% of it. Its 60.7% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 76.9% 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 | 719 | 76.9% | 91 min | 4.45% | B− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 333 | 72.7% | 53 min | 2.40% | C |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 345 | 60.7% | 97 min | 2.90% | D |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 20 | 60.0% | 178 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 50.0% | 46 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Departure window
When American 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 345 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm196 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm141 flights55.3%
- 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: 55.3% 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 202579 flights61.6%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights51.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights71.4%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights58.5%
Scale runs 45% 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 60.7% 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 Oct–Dec 2025 at 51.7%, a swing of 20 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 54.2%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 13,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,564 reported delay minutes.
55% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.9% 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.
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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.1% on time across 345 flights, 7 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 7 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 2.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 328 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 LGA76.9%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.