Route reliability record
AUS→HRL
Austin to Harlingen
- Flights
- 739
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 273 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 739 AUS to HRL flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly AUS to HRL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.8%, against 72.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 51 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 737 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
72.2% on time across 739 flights
These figures cover 739 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to HRL
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 | 739 | 72.2% | 61 min | 0.27% | C+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin to Harlingen
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 → MFEAustin to McAllen | SkyWest Airlines | 83.5% | 83.8% | 0.39% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 4177 10:30 |
| 2. AUS → HRLAustin to Harlingen | Southwest Airlines | 72.0% | 72.2% | 0.27% | 8am–11am, 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 38 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am285 flights92.6%
- 11am–2pm34 flights79.4%
- 2pm–5pm61 flights54.1%
- 5pm–8pm152 flights63.8%
- 8pm–5am207 flights54.4%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.6% of the time, against 54.1% for the afternoon window. That is 38 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 285 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter AUS to HRL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On AUS to HRL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 92.6% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 54.1%, a wide gap of 38.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am92.6%
- 11am–2pm79.4%
- 2–5pm54.1%
- 5–8pm63.8%
- 8pm–5am54.4%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
July is the worst month at 59.5% on time, 29 points below September, the best at 88.5%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.9%, a spread of 20 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 68% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
68% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 68 to one. The split is drawn from 12,419 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 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.89% 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
9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 273 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.2% on time across 739 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 739 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HRL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 739 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 72.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 737 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to HRL questions
How often is AUS to HRL delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.8% of the 739 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is AUS to HRL compared with the rest of the country?
72.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 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 HRL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 54.1%, 38 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 July delays on AUS to HRL?
July is the weakest month at 59.5% on time, compared with 88.5% in September. Across the year that is 29 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
- HRL to AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.9%
- DFW to HRL, a related route85.4%
- AUS to DFW, a related route74.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. AUS to HRL and HRL 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.