Carrier route record

NKMSY→TPA

Spirit Airlines · New Orleans to Tampa

Flights: 221
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on MSY to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 221 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on MSY to TPA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 75 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 214 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.71%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.2%

Every carrier on MSY to TPA, 1,078 flights

These figures cover 221 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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

Spirit against every carrier on MSY to TPA

Spirit flew 221 of the 1,078 flights on MSY to TPA, about 21% of it. Its 70.1% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Spirit at 70.1%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to TPA
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	221	70.1%	63 min	2.71%	C

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 221 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am8 flights—
11am–2pm12 flights—
2pm–5pm134 flights68.2%
5pm–8pm67 flights72.3%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 72.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.

Across the year

Spirit on MSY to TPA through the year

Jul–Sep 202545 flights67.4%
Oct–Dec 202571 flights74.3%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights66.2%
Apr–Jun 202621 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.1% on time across 221 flights.

Quarter by quarter Spirit on MSY to TPA held fairly steady: 67.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 74.3% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 66.2% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.0%. 24 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 4,046 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
49%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
1%

49% 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 4,046 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 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 4,046 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 2.71%, against 1.81% 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 69.3% on time across 222 flights, within about a point 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. 221 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 Spirit on MSY to TPA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 221 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 70.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures