Route reliability record
HOU→MAF
Houston to Midland
- Flights
- 1,363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 441 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 1,363 HOU to MAF flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly HOU to MAF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.8%, against 82.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,356 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.3% on time across 1,363 flights
These figures cover 1,363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to MAF
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 | 1,363 | 82.3% | 53 min | 0.44% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Midland
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. HOU → MAFHouston to Midland | Southwest Airlines | 81.9% | 82.3% | 0.44% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. IAH → MAFHouston to Midland | United Airlines | 78.9% | 79.4% | 0.66% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights93.1%
- 11am–2pm241 flights85.4%
- 2pm–5pm272 flights77.9%
- 5pm–8pm129 flights83.7%
- 8pm–5am356 flights72.0%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.1% of the time, against 72.0% for the overnight window. That is 21 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HOU to MAF 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 HOU to MAF, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 93.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 72.0%, a wide gap of 21.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am93.1%
- 11am–2pm85.4%
- 2–5pm77.9%
- 5–8pm83.7%
- 8pm–5am72.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 64.9% on time, 31 points below January, the best at 95.5%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.0%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 12,594 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 93.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, 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
5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 441 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 runs 84.7% on time across 1,362 flights, within 2 points 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 1,363 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 MAF 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 95.5% on time and June 64.9%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to MAF questions
How often is HOU to MAF delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.7% of the 1,363 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to MAF compared with the rest of the country?
82.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to MAF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.0%, 21 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 MAF?
June is the weakest month at 64.9% on time, compared with 95.5% in January. 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
- MAF to HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- DFW to MAF, a related route81.9%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.3%
- 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. HOU to MAF and MAF 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.