Carrier route record
UALGA→IAH
United Airlines · New York to Houston
- Flights
- 2,382
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LGA to IAH lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,382 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on LGA to IAH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,334 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.5%
Every carrier on LGA to IAH, 4,060 flights
These figures cover 2,382 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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
United against every carrier on LGA to IAH
United flew 2,382 of the 4,060 flights on LGA to IAH, most of the route. Its 77.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 80.6% to Delta at 74.5%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 32 | 80.6% | 38 min | 3.12% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 304 | 79.8% | 65 min | 3.95% | B− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 2,382 | 77.1% | 87 min | 1.76% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,342 | 74.5% | 85 min | 3.73% | C− |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on LGA to IAH
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 32 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–8am573 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am394 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm316 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm572 flights64.9%
- 5pm–8pm281 flights60.0%
- 8pm–5am246 flights62.4%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.0% on time, against 91.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 573 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on LGA to IAH through the year
July is the worst month at 66.4% on time, 26 points below January, the best at 92.6%. 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 233 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.2%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 47,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
39% 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 47,000 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 46,550 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 91.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% 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 1,416 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 71.4% on time across 2,382 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,382 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 LGA to IAH
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 92.6% on time and July 66.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,334 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to IAH, every carrier
- United on IAH to LGA, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to IAH79.8%
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to IAH74.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.