Route reliability record
PHL→MSY
Philadelphia to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,117
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,089 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,117 PHL to MSY flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHL to MSY: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.3%, against 78.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,082 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
80.1% on time across 621 flights
These figures cover 1,117 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHL to MSY
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 36 | 88.6% | 46 min | 2.78% | A |
| American Airlines | 621 | 80.1% | 83 min | 1.61% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 298 | 75.2% | 100 min | 5.03% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 162 | 73.4% | 78 min | 1.85% | C |
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 13 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–8am32 flights77.4%
- 8am–11am409 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm238 flights82.3%
- 2pm–5pm109 flights70.1%
- 5pm–8pm217 flights71.9%
- 8pm–5am112 flights71.8%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 82.8% of the time, against 70.1% for the afternoon window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 409 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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 52.4% on time, against 89.5% in November. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.8%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 20,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 20,450 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 82.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.60%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% 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 1,089 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 runs 80.5% on time across 1,117 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,117 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. November runs 89.5% on time and December 52.4%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,082 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHL to MSY questions
How often is PHL to MSY delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 1,117 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is PHL to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
78.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHL to MSY?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.1%, 13 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 PHL to MSY?
December is the weakest month at 52.4% on time, compared with 89.5% in November. Across the year that is 37 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 PHL — the return legseparate record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PHL to MSY80.1%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to MSY75.2%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to MSY73.4%
- PHL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- PHL to MCO, a related route72.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record88.6%
- American Airlines on-time record80.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record75.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PHL to MSY and MSY to PHL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.