Carrier route record

UAIAH→MSY

United Airlines · Houston to New Orleans

Flights: 2,783
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 94%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on IAH to MSY lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,783 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's IAH to MSY record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,774 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.25%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.9%

Every carrier on IAH to MSY, 2,962 flights

These figures cover 2,783 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 MSY

United flew 2,783 of the 2,962 flights on IAH to MSY, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.7% to SkyWest at 75.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on IAH to MSY
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	148	83.7%	66 min	0.68%	B+
United Airlines (this page)	2,783	82.9%	63 min	0.25%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	27	76.9%	195 min	3.70%	B−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	4	75.0%	138 min	0.00%	B+

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on IAH to MSY

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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am336 flights92.3%
8am–11am381 flights86.1%
11am–2pm354 flights86.2%
2pm–5pm555 flights81.9%
5pm–8pm450 flights75.1%
8pm–5am707 flights80.9%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.3% of the time, against 75.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 707 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on IAH to MSY through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 68.2% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 92.0%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 266 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.3%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 30,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
5%

44% 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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 29,728 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.25%, 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

6.6% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 305 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 runs 82.4% on time across 2,784 flights, within half 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 2,783 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 MSY

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.0% on time and July 68.2%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,774 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures