Carrier route record
UAIAH→BNA
United Airlines · Houston to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,053
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 74%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on IAH to BNA sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,053 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on IAH to BNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,044 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.4%
Every carrier on IAH to BNA, 1,429 flights
These figures cover 1,053 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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
United against every carrier on IAH to BNA
United flew 1,053 of the 1,429 flights on IAH to BNA, most of the route. Its 74.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 74.7% to SkyWest at 69.9%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,053 | 74.7% | 57 min | 0.47% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 376 | 69.9% | 75 min | 0.80% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on IAH to BNA
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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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am267 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm255 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am169 flights69.8%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.7% of the time, against 65.5% for the afternoon 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IAH to BNA through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 59.8%. February is the strongest month at 89.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 30 points. August was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.6%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on IAH to BNA runs when it is late
The 264 late arrivals split 105 under half an hour, 85 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 74 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early158 flights15.1%
- Within 15 min622 flights59.6%
- 15–29 min late105 flights10.1%
- 30–59 min late85 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late47 flights4.5%
- 2+ hours late27 flights2.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,044 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 184 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 15 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 95 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at BNA.
The worst days
Worst days for United on IAH to BNA
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 March 2026, 7 hours 22 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 March 2026 | 7 hours 22 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 April 2026 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 August 2026 | 4 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 August 2026 | 4 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 14,951 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 86.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, 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 costs
7.1% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 657 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.7% on time across 1,051 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,053 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking United on IAH to BNA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,053 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 74.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,044 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to BNA, every carrier
- United on BNA to IAH, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on IAH to BNA69.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.