Carrier route record
UADFW→IAH
United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston
- Flights
- 2,414
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DFW to IAH lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,414 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 840 at 78.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DFW to IAH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,362 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.8%
Every carrier on DFW to IAH, 5,780 flights
These figures cover 2,414 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DFW to IAH
United flew 2,414 of the 5,780 flights on DFW to IAH, about 42% of it. Its 76.9% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.0% to American at 59.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 78.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 59.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,465 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 840 | 78.0% | 55 min | 2.98% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 53 | 77.6% | 98 min | 7.55% | B− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 2,414 | 76.9% | 86 min | 1.99% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 75.0% | 113 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 2,465 | 59.7% | 83 min | 3.73% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 3.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DFW to IAH
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 12 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am669 flights81.0%
- 8am–11am327 flights79.9%
- 11am–2pm261 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm604 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm553 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.0% of the time, against 68.8% for the evening window. That is 12 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 669 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DFW to IAH through the year
August is the worst month at 67.1% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 93.3%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 235 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.8%. 12 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 47,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
41% 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 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 46,687 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 15,000 minutes out of 47,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 224 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 runs 75.7% on time across 2,415 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,414 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on DFW to IAH
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 93.3% on time and August 67.1%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,362 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to IAH, every carrier
- United on IAH to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to IAH78.0%
- American Airlines on DFW to IAH59.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.