Route reliability record
MSY→ORD
New Orleans to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,424
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 837 mi
- Carriers
- 7
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 an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,424 MSY to ORD flights, of which United Airlines flew 843 at 82.5% on time.
Best time to fly MSY to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.3%, against 77.7% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 82.5% on time across 843 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,345 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
82.5% on time across 843 flights
These figures cover 2,424 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 82.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 425 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 843 | 82.5% | 79 min | 1.42% | B |
| Envoy Air | 463 | 81.4% | 69 min | 1.94% | B |
| Republic Airways | 396 | 78.6% | 73 min | 3.03% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 190 | 72.2% | 73 min | 7.37% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 96 | 69.1% | 67 min | 2.08% | C |
| American Airlines | 425 | 67.8% | 146 min | 3.06% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 63.6% | 67 min | 0.00% | D+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.1% 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 Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSY → ORDNew Orleans to Chicago | United Airlines | 81.3% | 82.5% | 1.42% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. MSY → ORDNew Orleans to Chicago | Envoy Air | 79.8% | 81.4% | 1.94% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. MSY → ORDNew Orleans to Chicago | Republic Airways | 76.2% | 78.6% | 3.03% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. MSY → MDWNew Orleans to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 72.9% | 73.7% | 1.08% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. MSY → ORDNew Orleans to Chicago | American Airlines | 65.7% | 67.8% | 3.06% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
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 21 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am586 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am429 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm472 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm556 flights74.2%
- 5pm–8pm371 flights63.8%
- 8pm–5am10 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.8% on time, against 84.8% 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 586 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSY to ORD 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 ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 63.8%, a wide gap of 21.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.8%
- 8–11am80.3%
- 11am–2pm81.1%
- 2–5pm74.2%
- 5–8pm63.8%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
June is the worst month at 68.0% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 93.6%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 248 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.2%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 48,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 48,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 47,967 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 84.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.56%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 actually costs
9.2% 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 837 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 74.6% on time across 2,426 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 2,424 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 ORD 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 93.6% on time and June 68.0%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,345 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to ORD questions
How often is MSY to ORD 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 22.3% of the 2,424 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to ORD?
United Airlines leads at 82.5% on time across 843 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 67.8%, a gap of 15 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 ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.8%, 21 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 June delays on MSY to ORD?
June is the weakest month at 68.0% on time, compared with 93.6% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- ORD to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on MSY to ORD82.5%
- Envoy Air on MSY to ORD81.4%
- Republic Airways on MSY to ORD78.6%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to ORD72.2%
- American Airlines on MSY to ORD67.8%
- MSY to ATL, a related route82.2%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- MSY to IAH, a related route83.2%
- United Airlines on-time record82.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. MSY to ORD and ORD 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.