Carrier route record
UABNA→IAH
United Airlines · Nashville to Houston
- Flights
- 997
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 71%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BNA to IAH lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 997 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's BNA to IAH record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 990 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on BNA to IAH, 1,405 flights
These figures cover 997 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on BNA to IAH
United flew 997 of the 1,405 flights on BNA to IAH, most of the route. Its 81.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.4% to Spirit at 8.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 395 | 87.4% | 96 min | 1.27% | A |
| United Airlines (this page) | 997 | 81.7% | 82 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 8.3% | 37 min | 7.69% | F− |
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 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–8am227 flights88.1%
- 8am–11am202 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm164 flights82.9%
- 2pm–5pm199 flights70.8%
- 5pm–8pm203 flights73.3%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 70.8% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 227 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BNA to IAH through the year
June is the worst month at 63.1% on time, 33 points below September, the best at 96.2%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 108 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.8%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
37% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 14,746 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 92.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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 costs
6.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 657 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.9% on time across 998 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 997 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 United on BNA to IAH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 997 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 81.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 990 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to IAH, every carrier
- United on IAH to BNA, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on BNA to IAH87.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.