Carrier route record
NKORD→MSY
Spirit Airlines · Chicago to New Orleans
- Flights
- 216
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on ORD to MSY draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 216 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 466 at 83.8% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.8% on time across 466 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 203 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on ORD to MSY, 2,402 flights
These figures cover 216 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% 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 ORD to MSY
Spirit flew 216 of the 2,402 flights on ORD to MSY, about 9% of it. Its 67.5% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.8% to American at 62.6%. Three 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; American Airlines manages 62.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 401 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 Airlines (this page)thin sample | 216 | 67.5% | 80 min | 6.02% | C− |
| American Airlines | 401 | 62.6% | 90 min | 2.24% | D |
The spread between Envoy and American is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Spirit runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 48 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am17 flights—
- 8am–11am61 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm30 flights—
- 2pm–5pm4 flights—
- 5pm–8pm11 flights—
- 8pm–5am93 flights45.8%
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 45.8% on time, against 93.4% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 93 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on ORD to MSY through the year
- Jul–Sep 202542 flights71.4%
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights87.7%
- Jan–Mar 202683 flights50.0%
- Apr–Jun 202624 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. 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 67.5% on time across 216 flights.
Spirit on ORD to MSY did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 87.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 38 points on roughly 72 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 74.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.5%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 5,292 reported delay minutes.
- 36%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,901 minutes out of 5,292, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,292 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 93.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.02%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 16.7% 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 70.5% on time across 215 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. 216 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 ORD to MSY
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.02% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 203 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSY, every carrier
- Spirit 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%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSY62.6%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.