Route reliability record
MSY→MCO
New Orleans to Orlando
- Flights
- 2,225
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 551 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 2,225 MSY to MCO flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 395 at 81.6% on time.
Best time to fly MSY to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.5%, against 77.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,183 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.26%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Spirit
81.6% on time across 395 flights
These figures cover 2,225 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to MCO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 395 | 81.6% | 75 min | 3.54% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,596 | 77.5% | 57 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 234 | 70.5% | 81 min | 2.56% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New Orleans to Orlando
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSY → MCONew Orleans to Orlando | Spirit Airlines | 78.7% | 81.6% | 3.54% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. MSY → MCONew Orleans to Orlando | Southwest Airlines | 77.1% | 77.5% | 0.50% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am626 flights92.4%
- 8am–11am302 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm302 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm332 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm341 flights63.8%
- 8pm–5am322 flights67.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.8% on time, against 92.4% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 626 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSY to MCO by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MSY to MCO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 63.8%, a wide gap of 28.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.4%
- 8–11am89.7%
- 11am–2pm72.8%
- 2–5pm66.5%
- 5–8pm63.8%
- 8pm–5am67.1%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 89.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. February was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.0%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 31,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 30,766 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.26% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.63%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 551 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 74.4% on time across 2,254 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,225 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.4% on time and July 66.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,183 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to MCO questions
How often is MSY to MCO delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.5% of the 2,225 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to MCO?
Spirit Airlines leads at 81.6% on time across 395 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 77.5%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSY to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.8%, 29 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on MSY to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 89.4% in September. Across the year that is 23 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to MCO81.6%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to MCO77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on MSY to MCO70.5%
- MSY to ATL, a related route82.2%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- MSY to IAH, a related route83.2%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record81.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record70.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MSY to MCO and MCO to MSY are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.