RDU to MSY flight delays
Raleigh/Durham, NC (RDU) New Orleans, LA (MSY) · 779 miles
137 flights · July 2024 – July 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
74.44%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
2.92%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
82 min
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
22 min
Delay per flight
Averaged over every flight flown
What the record says about this route
Cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth pricing here: 2.92% of scheduled flights never operated. A late flight still gets you there. A cancelled one leaves you rebooking, and on a route with few daily departures that can mean losing a day.
The two directions do not behave alike. MSY to RDU arrives on time 7.5 points more often than the outbound. Delay accumulates through the flying day, so whichever direction is scheduled later tends to carry the worse record — which is an argument for booking the morning departure if the choice exists.
Flights from Raleigh/Durham to New Orleans run late more often than the average route, though not severely.
Every airline on RDU to MSY
Ranked by how many flights each one operated. A carrier with fewer than 100 flights in the period is listed but not graded.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Avg delay | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 58 | 68.97% | 0% | 89 min | — |
| Spirit Airlines | 51 | 79.59% | 3.92% | 80 min | — |
| Frontier Airlines | 28 | 76.92% | 7.14% | 61 min | — |
Month by month
Share of flights that arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, by month flown.
Other routes from Raleigh/Durham
Common questions
Are flights from Raleigh/Durham to New Orleans usually delayed?
74.44% of flights on the RDU to MSY route arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, so roughly 3 in every ten arrived late. That is about the same as the average route in this record.
How often are RDU to MSY flights cancelled?
2.92% of scheduled flights did not operate — about 29 in every thousand. That is high enough that cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth planning around.
When RDU to MSY flights are late, how late are they?
About 82 minutes on average across the flights that arrived more than 15 minutes behind schedule.
What these figures do and do not tell you
Everything on this page is counted from the flights that actually operated on RDU to MSY during July 2024 – July 2026, as reported by the airlines to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "On time" is the federal definition: arriving at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
A route's record is a description of the past, not a forecast. Weather, air traffic control and the aircraft's earlier flights that day drive most delays, and none of them are predictable from a historical rate. What the record does tell you is whether this route runs late more often than others, and which carrier on it has the better history — which is the part you can actually act on when you book.
Cancellations are counted separately from delays because they are a different problem for a traveller: a late flight still gets you there. How the grade is calculated →