Carrier route record
DLMSY→LGA
Delta Air Lines · New Orleans to New York
- Flights
- 689
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSY to LGA sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 689 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 648 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.93%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on MSY to LGA, 1,391 flights
These figures cover 689 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSY to LGA
Delta flew 689 of the 1,391 flights on MSY to LGA, about 50% of it. Its 74.7% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 74.7% 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) | 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 Airlinesthin sample | 345 | 59.3% | 101 min | 3.19% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 50.0% | 46 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSY to LGA
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 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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am101 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm264 flights79.4%
- 2pm–5pm4 flights—
- 5pm–8pm149 flights68.6%
- 8pm–5am171 flights66.2%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.5% of the time, against 66.2% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 264 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 81.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.9%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSY to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on MSY to LGA often beats the schedule: 212 of 648 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 164 late arrivals split 43 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 78 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early212 flights32.7%
- Within 15 min272 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late43 flights6.6%
- 30–59 min late43 flights6.6%
- 1–2 hours late45 flights6.9%
- 2+ hours late33 flights5.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 648 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
30 of 173 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 21 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSY to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 February 2026, 16 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 February 2026 | 16 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 15 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 July 2026 | 13 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 June 2026 | 8 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 July 2026 | 7 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 14,968 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,526 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.93%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
12.0% 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 79.1% on time across 689 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 689 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 4.93% 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. 648 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 LGA59.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.