Route reliability record
PHX→MSY
Phoenix to New Orleans
- Flights
- 934
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,301 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 934 PHX to MSY flights, of which American Airlines flew 376 at 75.5% on time.
Best time to fly PHX to MSY: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.3% of the time and Saturday flights 83.6%, against 71.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 59 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 928 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
75.5% on time across 376 flights
These figures cover 934 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 PHX to MSY
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 550 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 376 | 75.5% | 69 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 24 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 21 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 550 | 69.0% | 52 min | 0.36% | C+ |
American leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix to New Orleans
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → MSYPhoenix to New Orleans | American Airlines | 74.9% | 75.5% | 0.80% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. PHX → MSYPhoenix to New Orleans | Southwest Airlines | 68.8% | 69.0% | 0.36% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 18 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am269 flights81.3%
- 11am–2pm270 flights73.6%
- 2pm–5pm17 flights—
- 5pm–8pm285 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am89 flights62.9%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 81.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 285 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
June is the worst month at 60.3% on time, 23 points below August, the best at 83.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.7%. 19 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 50% of the 15,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
50% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 15,166 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 5,962 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,301 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 77.8% on time across 936 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 934 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 934 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 71.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 928 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to MSY questions
How often is PHX to MSY delayed?
Roughly 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 28.3% of the 934 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to MSY?
American Airlines leads at 75.5% on time across 376 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 69.0%, a gap of 7 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 PHX to MSY?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.9%, 18 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 June delays on PHX to MSY?
June is the weakest month at 60.3% on time, compared with 83.3% in August. Across the year that is 23 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 PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PHX to MSY75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to MSY69.0%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- American Airlines on-time record75.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PHX to MSY and MSY to PHX 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.