Route reliability record
HOU→AUS
Houston to Austin
- Flights
- 1,403
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 148 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,403 HOU to AUS flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly HOU to AUS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.5%, against 74.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,399 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.1% on time across 1,403 flights
These figures cover 1,403 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to AUS
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 | 1,403 | 74.1% | 49 min | 0.29% | C+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Austin
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. IAH → AUSHouston to Austin | United Airlines | 78.8% | 79.4% | 0.80% | 5am–8am, Tue (route) | UA 1859 12:10 |
| 2. HOU → AUSHouston to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 73.9% | 74.1% | 0.29% | 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 27 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–8am13 flights—
- 8am–11am410 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm197 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm235 flights60.4%
- 5pm–8pm125 flights75.8%
- 8pm–5am423 flights61.5%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.8% of the time, against 60.4% for the afternoon window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 423 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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 57.0% on time, 31 points below February, the best at 88.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 144 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.0%. 20 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 54% of the 18,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 17,576 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 87.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
6.1% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.0% on time across 1,399 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,403 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 AUS 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. February runs 88.0% on time and June 57.0%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,399 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to AUS questions
How often is HOU to AUS delayed?
About 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 25.9% of the 1,403 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to AUS compared with the rest of the country?
74.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to AUS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 60.4%, 27 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 HOU to AUS?
June is the weakest month at 57.0% on time, compared with 88.0% in February. Across the year that is 31 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
- AUS to HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.1%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.1%
- 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. HOU to AUS and AUS to HOU 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.