Carrier route record
WNTPA→MSY
Southwest Airlines · Tampa to New Orleans
- Flights
- 853
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TPA to MSY lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 853 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's TPA to MSY record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 846 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.5%
Every carrier on TPA to MSY, 1,078 flights
These figures cover 853 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Southwest against every carrier on TPA to MSY
Southwest flew 853 of the 1,078 flights on TPA to MSY, most of the route. Its 82.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Spirit at 69.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 853 | 82.0% | 61 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 222 | 69.3% | 64 min | 1.80% | C |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 46 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–8am159 flights97.5%
- 8am–11am161 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm113 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm187 flights80.5%
- 5pm–8pm90 flights51.7%
- 8pm–5am143 flights67.6%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 187 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TPA to MSY through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.5% 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 91 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.5%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 73% of the 9,258 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.
- 73%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
73% 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 9,258 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 71 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 9,258 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 are rare at 0.70%, 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 costs
6.3% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.9% on time across 854 flights, 3 points below 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. 853 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 Southwest on TPA to MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 853 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 82.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 846 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to MSY, every carrier
- Southwest on MSY to TPA, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on TPA to MSY69.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.