Route reliability record
TPA→MSY
Tampa to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,078
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 487 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,078 TPA to MSY flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly TPA to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.1%, against 79.5% 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
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,067 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.0% on time across 853 flights
These figures cover 1,078 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on TPA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 853 | 82.0% | 61 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 222 | 69.3% | 64 min | 1.80% | 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 39 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–8am163 flights97.5%
- 8am–11am199 flights91.9%
- 11am–2pm121 flights86.8%
- 2pm–5pm193 flights80.6%
- 5pm–8pm219 flights58.9%
- 8pm–5am183 flights68.1%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.9% on time, against 97.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 219 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.
November is the best month on the calendar at 89.2% 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 122 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.7%. 12 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 66% of the 14,000 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.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
66% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 13,530 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 97.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% 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.
At 487 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 77.2% on time across 1,078 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,078 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. 1,078 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 79.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,067 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to MSY questions
How often is TPA to MSY delayed?
About 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 20.5% of the 1,078 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is TPA to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
79.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TPA to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.9%, 39 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 May delays on TPA to MSY?
May is the weakest month at 66.2% on time, compared with 89.2% in November. 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 TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to MSY82.0%
- Spirit Airlines on TPA to MSY69.3%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.9%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record69.3%
- 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. TPA to MSY and MSY to TPA 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.