Carrier route record

NKTPA→MSY

Spirit Airlines · Tampa to New Orleans

Flights: 222
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on TPA to MSY sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 222 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Spirit on TPA to MSY runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 83 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 218 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.80%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.5%

Every carrier on TPA to MSY, 1,078 flights

These figures cover 222 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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

Spirit against every carrier on TPA to MSY

Spirit flew 222 of the 1,078 flights on TPA to MSY, about 21% of it. Its 69.3% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Spirit at 69.3%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to MSY
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	222	69.3%	64 min	1.80%	C

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 20 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–8am1 flights—
8am–11am38 flights84.2%
11am–2pm8 flights—
2pm–5pm6 flights—
5pm–8pm129 flights64.0%
8pm–5am40 flights70.0%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.0% on time, against 84.2% 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 129 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on TPA to MSY through the year

Jul–Sep 202545 flights62.2%
Oct–Dec 202571 flights84.5%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights63.0%
Apr–Jun 202622 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 69.3% on time across 222 flights.

Spirit on TPA to MSY did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 84.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 62.2%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 74 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 75.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.8%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 4,272 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
3%

52% 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 4,272 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 4,272 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 84.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 12.4% 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.

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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 70.1% on time across 221 flights, within about a point 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. 222 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 TPA to MSY

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 222 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 69.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 218 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures