Carrier route record

OOIAH→TUL

SkyWest Airlines · Houston to Tulsa

Flights: 784
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 70%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on IAH to TUL 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 784 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's IAH to TUL record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 782 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.26%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.9%

Every carrier on IAH to TUL, 1,122 flights

These figures cover 784 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

SkyWest against every carrier on IAH to TUL

SkyWest flew 784 of the 1,122 flights on IAH to TUL, most of the route. Its 83.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 83.1% to United at 75.8%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on IAH to TUL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	784	83.1%	77 min	0.26%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	338	75.8%	62 min	0.89%	B+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 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–8am353 flights86.1%
8am–11am3 flights—
11am–2pm341 flights83.3%
2pm–5pm1 flights—
5pm–8pm49 flights65.3%
8pm–5am37 flights75.0%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.1% of the time, against 65.3% for the evening window. That is 21 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 353 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on IAH to TUL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, June worst

June is the worst month at 71.6% on time, 25 points below October, the best at 96.7%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.1%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 10,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
7%

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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 10,184 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 3,742 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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

7.0% 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 runs 82.6% on time across 787 flights, within half a point 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. 784 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 SkyWest on IAH to TUL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 784 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 83.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 782 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