Route reliability record
IAH→TPA
Houston to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,643
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 787 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,643 IAH to TPA flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly IAH to TPA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.6%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,632 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
83.6% on time across 1,363 flights
These figures cover 1,643 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
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to TPA
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 | 1,363 | 83.6% | 66 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 143 | 72.7% | 58 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 137 | 70.9% | 129 min | 2.19% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on IAH to TPA
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Tampa
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 → TPAHouston to Tampa | United Airlines | 83.3% | 83.6% | 0.37% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1312 18:05 |
| 2. HOU → TPAHouston to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 75.0% | 75.2% | 0.29% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 33 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–8am360 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am34 flights61.8%
- 11am–2pm436 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm308 flights83.0%
- 5pm–8pm409 flights78.2%
- 8pm–5am96 flights74.7%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.0% of the time, against 61.8% for the morning window. That is 33 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 436 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 69.4% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 93.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.7%. 11 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 48% of the 22,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
48% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 22,009 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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
6.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 787 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 84.7% on time across 1,650 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,643 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 TPA 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. February runs 93.9% on time and July 69.4%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,632 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to TPA questions
How often is IAH to TPA delayed?
Roughly 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 18.4% of the 1,643 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 TPA compared with the rest of the country?
81.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 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 TPA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.0% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 61.8%, 33 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 TPA?
July is the weakest month at 69.4% on time, compared with 93.9% in February. Across the year that is 25 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
- TPA to IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- United Airlines on IAH to TPA83.6%
- Spirit Airlines on IAH to TPA72.7%
- Frontier Airlines on IAH to TPA70.9%
- IAH to ORD, a related route74.8%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.3%
- IAH to DFW, a related route75.0%
- United Airlines on-time record83.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record72.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record70.9%
- 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 TPA and TPA 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.