Route reliability record
HOU→OKC
Houston to Oklahoma City
- Flights
- 1,251
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 419 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,251 HOU to OKC flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly HOU to OKC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.4%, against 76.8% 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
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,239 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.8% on time across 1,251 flights
These figures cover 1,251 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 OKC
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 | 1,251 | 76.8% | 51 min | 0.80% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Oklahoma City
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 → OKCHouston to Oklahoma City | SkyWest Airlines | 77.7% | 78.6% | 1.10% | 8am–11am, Thu | OO 5278 18:05 |
| 2. HOU → OKCHouston to Oklahoma City | Southwest Airlines | 76.2% | 76.8% | 0.80% | 5am–8am, 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 31 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–8am45 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am334 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm176 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm190 flights71.8%
- 5pm–8pm147 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am359 flights62.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.6% on time, against 93.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 359 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 60.9% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 87.4%. 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 72.0%. 11 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 59% of the 15,000 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
59% 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 21 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 14,504 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, 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
6.5% 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 419 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.7% on time across 1,252 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,251 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 OKC 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. September runs 87.4% on time and June 60.9%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,239 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to OKC questions
How often is HOU to OKC 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 23.2% of the 1,251 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to OKC compared with the rest of the country?
76.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to OKC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.6%, 31 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 OKC?
June is the weakest month at 60.9% on time, compared with 87.4% in September. Across the year that is 27 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
- OKC to HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- DFW to OKC, a related route72.4%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.8%
- 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 OKC and OKC 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.