Carrier route record
UAIAH→TPA
United Airlines · Houston to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,363
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 83%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on IAH to TPA lands a B+, 6 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 1,363 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's IAH to TPA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,355 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on IAH to TPA, 1,643 flights
These figures cover 1,363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 TPA
United flew 1,363 of the 1,643 flights on IAH to TPA, most of the route. Its 83.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.6% to Frontier at 70.9%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 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
United flight numbers on IAH to TPA
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 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–8am344 flights95.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm292 flights83.8%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights78.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% 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 77.0% on time against 95.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IAH to TPA through the year
June is the worst month at 71.0% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 93.7%. 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.8%. 9 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 45% 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
45% 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 5 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 14,730 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 95.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.37%, 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
6.1% 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.
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 87.3% on time across 1,362 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,363 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 TPA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 93.7% on time and June 71.0%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,355 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to TPA, every carrier
- United on TPA to IAH, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on IAH to TPA72.7%
- Frontier Airlines on IAH to TPA70.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.