Route reliability record
MSY→TPA
New Orleans to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,078
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 487 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,078 MSY to TPA flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to TPA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.5%, against 77.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,064 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.9% on time across 854 flights
These figures cover 1,078 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSY to TPA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 854 | 78.9% | 62 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 221 | 70.1% | 63 min | 2.71% | C |
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 37 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–8am270 flights96.7%
- 8am–11am101 flights93.0%
- 11am–2pm68 flights90.9%
- 2pm–5pm256 flights60.2%
- 5pm–8pm161 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am222 flights66.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.7% of the time, against 60.2% for the afternoon window. That is 37 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 270 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 88.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.7%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 15,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
58% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 15,111 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 96.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 487 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 79.5% on time across 1,078 flights, within 2 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. 1,078 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TPA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,078 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,064 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to TPA questions
How often is MSY to TPA 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 22.8% of the 1,078 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MSY to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
77.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSY to TPA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 60.2%, 37 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 May delays on MSY to TPA?
May is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 88.7% in September. Across the year that is 22 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
- TPA to MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to TPA78.9%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to TPA70.1%
- MSY to ATL, a related route83.3%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.3%
- MSY to IAH, a related route82.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record70.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MSY to TPA and TPA 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.