Flight number record

WN 46

Southwest Airlines · Houston to Dallas

Route: HOU → DAL
Departs: 17:30
Flights: 268
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s WN 46, check with Southwest Airlines.

WN 46 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 268 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so WN 46 runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 69 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 263 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.49%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 268 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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.

Schedule

When WN 46 flies

WN 46 is scheduled to leave Houston (HOU) at 17:30 local time and reach Dallas (DAL) at 18:40. That slot held for 253 of the 268 scheduled departures in the data, so the figures below describe one steady operation rather than a number that moved around the clock.

Departs 17:30253 flights94.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 17:30 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and WN 46 runs 3 points better at 70.7%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

WN 46 next to HOU to DAL

Every carrier on HOU to DAL combined arrived on time 80.9% of the time across 4,060 flights, so WN 46 is 10 points behind it. Across its whole network Southwest Airlines managed 76.6%, which this flight trails by 6 points.

WN 46 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
WN 46thin sample	268	70.7%	58 min	1.49%	C
All Southwest Airlines on HOU–DAL	4,060	80.9%	58 min	2.19%	B
All carriers on HOU–DAL	4,060	80.9%	58 min	2.19%	B
Southwest Airlines, whole network	1,390,634	76.6%	54 min	0.89%	B+

Across the year

WN 46 quarter by quarter

WN 46 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.1% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 57.4%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 67 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.

Jul–Sep 202570 flights71.4%
Oct–Dec 202565 flights68.9%
Jan–Mar 202671 flights83.1%
Apr–Jun 202662 flights57.4%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, WN 46 ranged from 64.0% on Thursday to 74.4% on Tuesday. With about 38 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why WN 46 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,500 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
29%
Carrier
25%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
3%

38% 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 4,500 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 4,500 delay minutes reported on WN 46.

Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

8.4% 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.

The same number turns up on thirteen other city pairs in the data, including DAL to BNA (56), DAL to FLL (30) and DAL to ABQ (24), but none flew often enough under WN 46 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to HOU to DAL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 268 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 WN 46

For a booking, WN 46 is one of the weaker ways to fly HOU to DAL: 10 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Southwest Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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