Carrier route record
WNMSY→TPA
Southwest Airlines · New Orleans to Tampa
- Flights
- 854
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MSY to TPA lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 854 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MSY to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 847 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.2%
Every carrier on MSY to TPA, 1,078 flights
These figures cover 854 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
Southwest against every carrier on MSY to TPA
Southwest flew 854 of the 1,078 flights on MSY to TPA, most of the route. Its 78.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Spirit at 70.1%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 854 | 78.9% | 62 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 221 | 70.1% | 63 min | 2.71% | C |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 45 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–11am90 flights94.4%
- 11am–2pm56 flights94.4%
- 2pm–5pm122 flights51.7%
- 5pm–8pm94 flights67.0%
- 8pm–5am222 flights66.8%
Scale runs 45% 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 51.7% for the afternoon window. That is 45 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
Southwest on MSY to TPA through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 93.6% 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 91 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.4%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 11,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
61% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 11,065 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 are rare at 0.70%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.5% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.0% on time across 853 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 854 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 Southwest on MSY to TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 854 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 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 847 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to TPA, every carrier
- Southwest on TPA to MSY, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to TPA70.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.