New Orleans Louis Armstrong MSY: the complete layover guide

MSY is one building, and that is the whole map. The terminal that opened in November 2019 replaced the old facility entirely, and you can learn it in the time it takes to finish a coffee.

Three concourses fan out from a central hall behind a single security checkpoint. Concourse A sits at the western end and handles international arrivals, with the customs facility on site. Concourse B is the middle pier with 14 gates. Concourse C anchors the other side. Once you clear security you can walk to any gate, restaurant or lounge in the airport, and the farthest gates in Concourse A are roughly a 10 minute walk from the checkpoint. No train, no shuttle, no second screening.

That geometry makes connections here genuinely easy. On a single ticket with no checked bag drama, 45 minutes between flights is workable because the worst case walk is short and there is nothing to rescreen. On separate tickets you are starting over at check in, so give yourself 2 hours. The one chokepoint is the checkpoint itself on a Monday morning or after a festival weekend, when half the city flies out at once.

The food is the reason to arrive early. Leah's Kitchen, on the walk toward Concourse C, honors chef Leah Chase with her fried chicken and gumbo under a large mural of her image. Dook's in Concourse B comes from the same Dooky Chase family. Café du Monde pours café au lait and fries beignets behind a window where you can watch the process from mixer to sugar shaker, just like the French Market original. Angelo Brocato, the gelato and cannoli institution founded in 1905, scoops in Concourse B. Most airports sell you a sad wrap. This one feeds you properly.

Getting downtown takes a car or a bus, never a train. The French Quarter is about 13 miles east, 20 to 30 minutes by road outside rush hour. Taxis charge a flat $36 to downtown for one or two passengers, plus $15 per person for three or more. Uber and Lyft usually land between $33 and $50. The RTA Airport Express, route 202, costs $1.25 into downtown and is the budget play if your schedule is loose. A shared airport shuttle runs to French Quarter hotels for $24 one way, with vans departing roughly every 30 minutes through the day and evening. For a layover dash, take the flat rate taxi and skip the surge pricing lottery.