Route reliability record
IAH→OKC
Houston to Oklahoma City
- Flights
- 1,224
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 395 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,224 IAH to OKC flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly IAH to OKC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Thursday flights 85.6%, 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 1,206 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.0% on time across 890 flights
These figures cover 1,224 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 OKC
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 Airlinesthin sample | 334 | 82.0% | 64 min | 1.50% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 890 | 80.0% | 89 min | 1.12% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on IAH to OKC
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Oklahoma City
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 → OKCHouston to Oklahoma City | SkyWest Airlines | 79.1% | 80.0% | 1.12% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | OO 5278 18:12 |
| 2. HOU → OKCHouston to Oklahoma City | Southwest Airlines | 75.0% | 75.7% | 0.90% | 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am187 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm6 flights—
- 2pm–5pm217 flights86.0%
- 5pm–8pm328 flights75.5%
- 8pm–5am483 flights78.7%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.0% of the time, against 75.5% for the evening window. That is 12 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 483 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter IAH to OKC 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 OKC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 75.5%, a wide gap of 11.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.0%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm86.0%
- 5–8pm75.5%
- 8pm–5am78.7%
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 23 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.
July is the worst month at 68.9% on time, 23 points below August, 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. March was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 72.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,455 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.4% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 395 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 85.1% on time across 1,224 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,224 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 OKC 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. August runs 92.0% on time and July 68.9%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,206 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to OKC questions
How often is IAH to OKC 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 1,224 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 OKC 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 IAH to OKC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.5%, 12 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 July delays on IAH to OKC?
July is the weakest month at 68.9% on time, compared with 92.0% in August. Across the year that is 23 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
- OKC to IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- United Airlines on IAH to OKC82.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on IAH to OKC80.0%
- IAH to ORD, a related route75.1%
- DFW to OKC, a related route73.0%
- IAH to DFW, a related route76.4%
- United Airlines on-time record82.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- 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. IAH to OKC and OKC 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.