Route reliability record
AUS→HOU
Austin to Houston
- Flights
- 1,399
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 148 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,399 AUS to HOU flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly AUS to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.4%, against 69.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,394 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
69.0% on time across 1,399 flights
These figures cover 1,399 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to HOU
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,399 | 69.0% | 51 min | 0.21% | C+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin to Houston
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AUS → IAHAustin to Houston | United Airlines | 74.5% | 75.5% | 1.27% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | UA 1966 05:30 |
| 2. AUS → HOUAustin to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 68.9% | 69.0% | 0.21% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 52 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–8am354 flights94.9%
- 8am–11am189 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm198 flights56.3%
- 2pm–5pm201 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm334 flights43.4%
- 8pm–5am123 flights59.3%
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 43.4% on time, against 94.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 354 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 45.6% on time, 37 points below January, the best at 82.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. January was the busiest month here, with 143 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.9%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 22,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 22,022 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 94.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.21%, 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 actually costs
7.7% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 148 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 74.1% on time across 1,403 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,399 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HOU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 82.3% on time and June 45.6%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,394 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to HOU questions
How often is AUS to HOU delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.0% of the 1,399 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is AUS to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
69.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AUS to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 43.4%, 52 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on AUS to HOU?
June is the weakest month at 45.6% on time, compared with 82.3% in January. Across the year that is 37 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- HOU to AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.4%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- AUS to DFW, a related route73.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. AUS to HOU and HOU to AUS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.