Route reliability record
HRL→HOU
Harlingen to Houston
- Flights
- 1,165
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 277 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That rests on 1,165 HRL to HOU flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly HRL to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.6% of the time and Friday flights 86.3%, against 80.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,162 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.5% on time across 1,165 flights
These figures cover 1,165 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 HRL to HOU
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 | 1,165 | 80.5% | 54 min | 0.17% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Harlingen to Houston
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. MFE → IAHMcAllen to Houston | United Airlines | 84.1% | 84.5% | 0.49% | 5pm–8pm, Fri | UA 678 07:00 |
| 2. HRL → HOUHarlingen to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 80.4% | 80.5% | 0.17% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.6%
- 8am–11am102 flights95.1%
- 11am–2pm252 flights76.9%
- 2pm–5pm163 flights67.9%
- 5pm–8pm219 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am64 flights73.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 95.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HRL to HOU 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 HRL to HOU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 63.9%, a wide gap of 31.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.6%
- 8–11am95.1%
- 11am–2pm76.9%
- 2–5pm67.9%
- 5–8pm63.9%
- 8pm–5am73.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 57.8%. January is the strongest month at 90.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. October was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 75.3%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 to one. The split is drawn from 12,256 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 95.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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
5.4% 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 about 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 277 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 75.9% on time across 1,165 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 1,165 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 HOU 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 90.1% on time and March 57.8%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,162 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HRL to HOU questions
How often is HRL to HOU delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.5% of the 1,165 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is HRL to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
80.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HRL to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.9%, 32 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 March delays on HRL to HOU?
March is the weakest month at 57.8% on time, compared with 90.1% in January. Across the year that is 32 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
- HOU to HRL — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- HRL to DFW, a related route86.8%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- HRL to AUS, a related route81.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.5%
- 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. HRL to HOU and HOU to HRL 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.