Carrier route record
AAORD→MSY
American Airlines · Chicago to New Orleans
- Flights
- 401
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to MSY draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 401 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 466 at 83.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to MSY runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 150 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 388 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on ORD to MSY, 2,402 flights
These figures cover 401 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.8% 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
American against every carrier on ORD to MSY
American flew 401 of the 2,402 flights on ORD to MSY, about 17% of it. Its 62.6% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.8% to American at 62.6%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 83.8% of the time; United Airlines manages 75.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 842 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 466 | 83.8% | 58 min | 1.93% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 81.8% | 123 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 79.1% | 55 min | 1.53% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 335 | 78.2% | 72 min | 1.49% | B |
| United Airlines | 842 | 75.1% | 66 min | 1.07% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 216 | 67.5% | 80 min | 6.02% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 401 | 62.6% | 90 min | 2.24% | D |
Envoy leads United by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am130 flights75.4%
- 11am–2pm10 flights—
- 2pm–5pm52 flights62.0%
- 5pm–8pm100 flights51.5%
- 8pm–5am109 flights58.1%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.5% on time, against 75.4% for the 8am–11am 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 130 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to MSY through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 78.8% 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 80 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 52.9%. 24 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 13,000 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
- 23%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 9%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 13,000 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 13,086 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 75.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.00%.
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. 19.8% 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.
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 70.3% on time across 400 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 401 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 American on ORD to MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 401 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 62.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 388 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSY, every carrier
- American on MSY to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSY83.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSY79.1%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSY78.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSY75.1%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to MSY67.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.