Route reliability record
ORD→MSY
Chicago to New Orleans
- Flights
- 2,426
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 837 mi
- Carriers
- 7
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,426 ORD to MSY flights, of which Envoy Air flew 464 at 81.5% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.6% of the time and Thursday flights 78.9%, against 74.6% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 81.5% on time across 464 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,365 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.5% on time across 464 flights
These figures cover 2,426 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 ORD to MSY
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 81.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 59.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 426 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 81.8% | 123 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 464 | 81.5% | 65 min | 2.37% | B |
| Republic Airways | 395 | 79.9% | 71 min | 1.52% | B |
| United Airlines | 843 | 76.6% | 66 min | 1.42% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 96 | 76.6% | 60 min | 2.08% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 191 | 69.7% | 85 min | 6.81% | C− |
| American Airlines | 426 | 59.3% | 91 min | 3.05% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 3.0% 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 Chicago to New Orleans
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. ORD → MSYChicago to New Orleans | Envoy Air | 79.6% | 81.5% | 2.37% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → MSYChicago to New Orleans | Republic Airways | 78.7% | 79.9% | 1.52% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. ORD → MSYChicago to New Orleans | United Airlines | 75.5% | 76.6% | 1.42% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 4. MDW → MSYChicago to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 73.4% | 74.4% | 1.38% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 5. ORD → MSYChicago to New Orleans | American Airlines | 57.5% | 59.3% | 3.05% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 32 points, against 22 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am209 flights87.6%
- 8am–11am778 flights84.6%
- 11am–2pm346 flights81.6%
- 2pm–5pm319 flights68.0%
- 5pm–8pm137 flights55.2%
- 8pm–5am637 flights61.3%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.2% on time, against 87.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 778 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to MSY 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 ORD to MSY, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 55.2%, a wide gap of 32.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.6%
- 8–11am84.6%
- 11am–2pm81.6%
- 2–5pm68.0%
- 5–8pm55.2%
- 8pm–5am61.3%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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.
December is the weak month at 66.3% on time, against 88.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 248 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.4%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 45,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 45,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 45,106 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 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.35% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.5% 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 77.7% on time across 2,424 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,426 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 MSY 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 88.7% on time and December 66.3%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,365 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to MSY questions
How often is ORD to MSY delayed?
About 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 25.4% of the 2,426 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to MSY?
Envoy Air leads at 81.5% on time across 464 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 59.3%, a gap of 22 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 ORD to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.2%, 32 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 December delays on ORD to MSY?
December is the weakest month at 66.3% 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
- MSY to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSY81.5%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSY79.9%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSY76.6%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to MSY69.7%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSY59.3%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record79.9%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to MSY and MSY to ORD 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.