Route reliability record
IAH→MFE
Houston to McAllen
- Flights
- 738
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 316 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, about a point 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 an hour and a half on average. That rests on 738 IAH to MFE flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly IAH to MFE: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.2% of the time and Thursday flights 82.7%, against 78.4% 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
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 731 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
80.5% on time across 409 flights
These figures cover 738 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to MFE
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 | 409 | 80.5% | 57 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 329 | 75.7% | 118 min | 0.91% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to McAllen
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 → MFEHouston to McAllen | United Airlines | 80.1% | 80.5% | 0.49% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
| 2. HOU → HRLHouston to Harlingen | Southwest Airlines | 75.8% | 75.9% | 0.17% | 8am–11am, 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 738 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm74 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm223 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm101 flights83.2%
- 8pm–5am339 flights79.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 83.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 9 points.
Explore
Filter IAH to MFE 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 IAH to MFE, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 83.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 74.0%, a real gap of 9.2 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm81.1%
- 2–5pm74.0%
- 5–8pm83.2%
- 8pm–5am79.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 May, when the on-time rate falls to 65.8%. January is the strongest month at 91.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. November was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.0%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 13,823 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,603 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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
9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 316 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.7% on time across 737 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 738 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MFE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 738 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 78.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 731 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to MFE questions
How often is IAH to MFE 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 21.6% of the 738 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is IAH to MFE compared with the rest of the country?
78.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IAH to MFE?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 83.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.0%, 9 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 May delays on IAH to MFE?
May is the weakest month at 65.8% on time, compared with 91.4% in January. Across the year that is 26 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
- MFE to IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- United Airlines on IAH to MFE80.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on IAH to MFE75.7%
- IAH to ORD, a related route75.1%
- DFW to MFE, a related route70.0%
- IAH to DFW, a related route76.4%
- United Airlines on-time record80.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. IAH to MFE and MFE to IAH 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.