Carrier route record
UAIAH→MCO
United Airlines · Houston to Orlando
- Flights
- 2,471
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on IAH to MCO earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,471 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 662 at 75.5% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's IAH to MCO record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,439 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on IAH to MCO, 3,669 flights
These figures cover 2,471 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
United against every carrier on IAH to MCO
United flew 2,471 of the 3,669 flights on IAH to MCO, most of the route. Its 85.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.1% to Frontier at 72.6%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 2,471 | 85.1% | 71 min | 0.65% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 662 | 75.5% | 84 min | 2.42% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 536 | 72.6% | 110 min | 0.93% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Spirit tops the table at 75.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on IAH to MCO
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 17 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am362 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am511 flights91.6%
- 11am–2pm386 flights86.2%
- 2pm–5pm603 flights81.5%
- 5pm–8pm475 flights76.5%
- 8pm–5am134 flights79.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.9% of the time, against 76.5% for the evening window. That is 17 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 603 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IAH to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 68.0% on time, 27 points below January, the best at 95.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 236 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.8%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 8,729 minutes out of 26,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 25,697 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 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, 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 costs
6.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 854 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 84.1% on time across 2,472 flights, within about a point 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 2,471 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on IAH to MCO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 95.3% on time and July 68.0%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,439 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to MCO, every carrier
- United on MCO to IAH, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on IAH to MCO75.5%
- Frontier Airlines on IAH to MCO72.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.