Carrier route record

UAIAH→OKC

United Airlines · Houston to Oklahoma City

Flights: 307
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 2

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

United on IAH to OKC 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 307 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's IAH to OKC record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 303 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.30%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.3%

Every carrier on IAH to OKC, 1,399 flights

These figures cover 307 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 OKC

United flew 307 of the 1,399 flights on IAH to OKC, about 22% of it. Its 82.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.2% to SkyWest at 78.6%.

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 OKC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	307	82.2%	67 min	1.30%	B
SkyWest Airlines	1,092	78.6%	87 min	1.10%	B

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 29 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–8am51 flights100.0%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm35 flights71.4%
2pm–5pm47 flights83.0%
5pm–8pm21 flights—
8pm–5am153 flights78.7%

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

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 71.4% on time against 100.0% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 153 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on IAH to OKC through the year

Jul–Sep 202556 flights83.9%
Oct–Dec 202572 flights88.9%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights81.4%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights76.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.2% on time across 307 flights.

United on IAH to OKC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 88.9% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.4%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 77 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.9%. 18 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 3,642 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
28%
Extreme weather
16%
National Airspace System
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,642 reported delay minutes.

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 3,642 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.3% 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 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 runs 80.0% on time across 308 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. 307 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 OKC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 307 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 82.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 303 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