Route reliability record
IAH→TUL
Houston to Tulsa
- Flights
- 1,122
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 429 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 1,122 IAH to TUL flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly IAH to TUL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.5%, against 80.9% 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
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,117 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
83.1% on time across 784 flights
These figures cover 1,122 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 TUL
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 Airlines | 784 | 83.1% | 77 min | 0.26% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 338 | 75.8% | 62 min | 0.89% | B+ |
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 17 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–8am356 flights85.9%
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm341 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm107 flights85.0%
- 5pm–8pm90 flights68.9%
- 8pm–5am225 flights71.9%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.9% of the time, against 68.9% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 69.5% on time, 21 points below February, the best at 90.1%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 143 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.6%. 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 46% 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
46% 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 9 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 15,192 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 5,616 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, 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
7.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 429 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 84.5% on time across 1,123 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 1,122 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 TUL 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 90.1% on time and July 69.5%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,117 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to TUL questions
How often is IAH to TUL 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 19.1% of the 1,122 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 TUL compared with the rest of the country?
80.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 TUL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.9%, 17 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 TUL?
July is the weakest month at 69.5% on time, compared with 90.1% in February. Across the year that is 21 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
- TUL to IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on IAH to TUL83.1%
- United Airlines on IAH to TUL75.8%
- IAH to ORD, a related route74.8%
- DFW to TUL, a related route72.3%
- IAH to DFW, a related route75.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.1%
- United Airlines on-time record75.8%
- 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 TUL and TUL 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.