Route reliability record
IAH→OMA
Houston to Omaha
- Flights
- 829
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 781 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 829 IAH to OMA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly IAH to OMA: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Monday flights 79.8%, against 75.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 825 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
74.3% on time across 720 flights
These figures cover 829 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to OMA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 79.8% | 67 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 720 | 74.3% | 71 min | 0.28% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on IAH to OMA
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.
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 19 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–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm177 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights86.5%
- 5pm–8pm134 flights73.1%
- 8pm–5am361 flights67.6%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 86.5% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 67.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
June is the worst month at 57.1% on time, 32 points below January, the best at 89.3%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 84 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.2%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 15,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 14,541 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 5,808 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.24%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 781 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.6% on time across 828 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 829 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 OMA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 829 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 75.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 825 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to OMA questions
How often is IAH to OMA delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.0% of the 829 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is IAH to OMA compared with the rest of the country?
75.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IAH to OMA?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.6%, 19 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 June delays on IAH to OMA?
June is the weakest month at 57.1% on time, compared with 89.3% in January. Across the year that is 32 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
- OMA to IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on IAH to OMA79.8%
- United Airlines on IAH to OMA74.3%
- IAH to ORD, a related route74.8%
- DEN to OMA, a related route75.8%
- IAH to DFW, a related route75.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.8%
- United Airlines on-time record74.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. IAH to OMA and OMA to IAH are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed IAH to OMA’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.