Route reliability record

MSY→ORD

New Orleans to Chicago

Flights: 2,400
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 837 mi
Carriers: 7

This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 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 2,400 flights, of which United Airlines flew 842 at 82.3% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.3% on time across 842 flights.

On time

78.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,325 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.17%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

United

82.3% on time across 842 flights

These figures cover 2,400 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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

Which airline is most reliable on MSY to ORD

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 82.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 400 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	842	82.3%	79 min	1.19%	B
Envoy Air	465	82.1%	68 min	1.72%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	336	78.0%	73 min	2.68%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	131	72.9%	61 min	1.53%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	215	70.5%	67 min	6.51%	C−
American Airlines	400	70.3%	137 min	2.25%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	11	63.6%	67 min	0.00%	D+

The spread between United and American is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 20 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am573 flights85.7%
8am–11am487 flights81.7%
11am–2pm484 flights79.3%
2pm–5pm572 flights72.2%
5pm–8pm274 flights65.3%
8pm–5am10 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.7% of the time, against 65.3% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 573 flights scheduled in it.

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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, June worst

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 83.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.3%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 44,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
30%
Carrier
28%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

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 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 44,036 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 85.7% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.17% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.96%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route are the an hour and a half kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

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. 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 74.8% on time across 2,402 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 2,400 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.

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. 2,325 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 five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 2,400 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 82.3% on time across 842 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 70.3%, a gap of 12 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 85.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.3%, 20 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.

Where to go next

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.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures