Carrier route record
DLMSY→LGA
Delta Air Lines · New Orleans to New York
- Flights
- 719
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 51%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSY to LGA lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 719 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on MSY to LGA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 683 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.6%
Every carrier on MSY to LGA, 1,421 flights
These figures cover 719 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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
Delta against every carrier on MSY to LGA
Delta flew 719 of the 1,421 flights on MSY to LGA, most of the route. Its 76.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 76.9% to Frontier at 50.0%. Four 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) | 719 | 76.9% | 91 min | 4.45% | B− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 333 | 72.7% | 53 min | 2.40% | C |
| American Airlinesthin 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+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSY to LGA
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am142 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm223 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm4 flights—
- 5pm–8pm179 flights72.4%
- 8pm–5am171 flights66.2%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.4% of the time, against 66.2% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 223 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSY to LGA through the year
December is the weak month at 61.1% on time, against 90.4% in January. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.0%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 14,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
35% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 14,376 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 6,291 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.45%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 10.8% 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 runs 79.6% on time across 719 flights, within 3 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. 719 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 LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 683 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to MSY, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to LGA72.7%
- American Airlines on MSY to LGA60.7%
- Delta Air Lines 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.